Beneath a Burnt Orange Sky
by Kyerie
Summary: Ten years after Rose Tyler was first trapped in an alternate universe, she has had to take up running yet again when Torchwood comes to call. Rose and Tony Tyler flee for their lives, guided by the scribbled notes of a dying man, they seek a world that can't exist, and a way through to where they can never go.
1. Prologue: We Begin with Happy Days

Jackie Tyler was a formidable woman. She'd survived the death of her husband, and had brought up a daughter all her own on the Powell Estate, and that daughter had gone on to save the world and the universe, several times.

When faced with the man who had taken her daughter away, she had slapped one of the most powerful beings in the universe and she'd do it again if it were called for, thanks much. No one hurt her daughter, not if she had anything to say about it.

So when she found herself travelling by Zeppelin back to London, one where she was not a poor hairdresser but a high ranking member of London society, she watched her daughter – home for good and safe, at last – who slept, curled in the arms of that daft alien she'd ripped through the universe to find, and Jackie made a plan to have words with this version of the Doctor.

Even if he had just saved the universe, he still needed a firm talking to. Dumping her Rose on some bloody blasted freezing beach in Norway. Again. Playing with her like that; just leaving her behind with some copy of himself without even asking. Oh yes, he probably needed a good smack, and if she couldn't have it out with the real Doctor, his copy would have to do.

* * *

"Mum, shut up," Rose ground out between clenched teeth.

Jackie raised her hands in her defence. "Well all I'm saying is Christmas would be a good a time as any for a wedding…"

John Lord, known also as the Doctor, the last Time Lord, the Oncoming Storm from the planet Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous, choked on his tea.

Coughing, spluttering, and attempting to clear the tea from his woefully inadequate lungs – where was his respiratory bypass when he needed it? – he spoke at the same time as Rose.

"Jackie that's a bit early!"

"We're not getting married, mum!"

"What?" both he and Rose said at once, turning to each other.

"You don't want to?" John asked.

"You do?"

"I thought you did, don't you?"

Rose raised her shoulders in a shrug. "We never talked about it. I just assumed…"

Jackie, choosing her moment carefully, gathered her tea and left the room quietly, a satisfied smile on her face that she'd got the conversation off the ground.

"You assumed what?" He met her eyes, cautious.

Rose weighed her words carefully, not wanting to offend him. "You don't do domestic. It doesn't matter to me. I'm just happy you're here. That's all I need."

"But your mum seems to think you want a wedding."

"Mum wants to throw a party, that's all."

They lapsed into an uncomfortable silence. In the five months since they were unceremoniously dropped into this universe by his fully Time Lord counterpart, their relationship had escaped definition, much has it had during their years travelling together. They were rarely apart, but their togetherness had never been named.

The Doctor had taken the name John Lord and had worked as an external consultant for Torchwood, though his time was primarily consumed with his own research at the university.

He had been given a small flat in the same block as Rose's own; paid for by Torchwood, the flats were let for the use of its researchers who were working in conjunction with the university at Oxford.

But now she and John were staying at a hotel in London after being forcibly removed from their flats following Rose's resignation. It was inconvenient, but he'd supported her principled stance, even if it did mean suffering Jackie's regular presence until they sorted out new living arrangements.

"What do _you_ want? Really?" John asked softly.

Rose looked away, and replied in a quiet voice. "I already told you, Doctor. You're stuck with me forever. I don't need any more than that."

John took a deep breath and let it out between tight lips. He ran a hand through his hair and leaned back in his chair, staring off into nothing. "I wasn't a good Time Lord, you know. All the ceremonial nonsense," he shuddered. "But I know it matters to some people. You humans, you're big on it too. I'm here, I'm here for good, I do mean that. But, Rose, tell me, is that – a wedding– something you want?"

"What does it matter?"

"What you want matters to me, you know that."

She seemed to weigh her response carefully before responding. "Then no, I don't want a wedding. Big party with all that fuss and mum driving me 'round the bend for months. I love you, and you're here. That's all that matters to me. Don't let mum make you think differently. Plus I don't think this universe could handle you in a tux. The sun might explode."

He chuckled, agreeing completely. "True. Don't have the best track record, me and tuxedos. Think we have any hope of ever shutting your mum up about it?"

"Probably not," Rose said with a sigh. Silence descended on them again, but after a beat he spoke up once more.

"Then how about you marry me the Gallifreyan way?" She stared at him, hearing the words but not quite processing them, and sat there in stunned silence. "Marriage wasn't for love on Gallifrey. It was ceremonial or political, like everything else my people did. But I've always done things my own way. I've already promised you forever, but I want to give you my name."

The silence stretched into awkwardness before she gathered her thoughts enough to speak.

"Well. Well, that will definitely shut mum up."

"Is that a yes?"

"Of course it is, you idiot." Rose grinned, tongue poking out from between her teeth. He reached over and pulled her into a kiss.

* * *

They were married in the gardens, beneath the solstice moon, in the eyes of her parents and Tony and the multitude of stars glittering in the firmament.

She'd worn a simple dress in as deep a blue as the gathering dusk. The air was warm for December, so she'd not needed a coat. Her hair cascaded in waves over her shoulders and she wore a simple string of pearls around her neck. The Doctor stood before her in a formal black suit, his only nod to the ceremonial garb of his people being the scarlet tie about his neck.

"I consent and gladly give," Pete intoned, his voice solemn but the corners of his eyes crinkled with happiness.

Jackie repeated the words, "I consent and gladly give." She passed her daughter's hand to John and smiled up at him.

He wrapped their hands together with a length of golden silk.

Beneath the gaze of a billion worlds circling a billion stars, the last Time Lord and the Bad Wolf promised each other forever in the ancient tongue of Gallifrey, which all assembled, for once, understood.

He leaned down to speak in her ear. The softly rolling syllables of his name echoed in her mind and etched themselves across her memory.

Rose wondered, in the weeks to come, how it was that she had spoken the practiced lines of her promise to him in the lyrical speech of his people, but he had simply smiled mysteriously and said some secrets were best not known.

* * *

A slip of sunlight broke through the blinds and nagged at her eyelids. Rose threw her arm up over her face to block it out, moaning at the intrusion of the day – the last day of their short holiday – into her happy bubble of sleep. Feeling a chill, she pulled the duvet up over her and rolled away from the light.

She heard a chuckle from across the room.

"S'not nice to laugh at your suffering wife," she muttered at him. A moment later she felt the bed bounce as he dropped onto it.

"Morning, love. Sleep well?"

"Mm. Yes. Can we take this bed to the new flat? It's gorgeous." She stretched her arms above her head and laid back in the down pillows.

He leaned over her, hands on the mattress on either side of her shoulders, and dropped a kiss on the tip of her nose. "No better than my bed on the TARDIS."

"Yeah, but this one's a close second. I'm keeping it. Don't care what the hotel says." She reached over to where she'd dropped her dressing gown beside the bed. As she pulled it on, she caught the scent of eggs and sausage. "Did you order breakfast?"

"Just arrived. Thought we'd get something into us before we have to face your mum."

"Oh God, she's going to be so bleedin' smug about this whole thing." She sat down and poured them each a cup from the porcelain teapot.

"Next she'll be bothering us about babies," he said casually.

Rose paused, missing her cup and spilling milk on the tray. She closed her opened jaw with a click of teeth. "Yes. Yeah. That… that's a conversation we definitely need to have."

Seeing her discomfort, the Doctor leaned over and planted a soft kiss on her lips. "But not right now. Let's just get used to being just us, alright?"

They settled into their breakfast. He pulled the copy of the London Times off of the tray and opened it to the crossword. He licked the tip of his pencil and went to work.

She watched him as he quickly solved the clues, scrawling the answers in the boxes. He became quite engrossed in the puzzle, but seemed to be nearly finished it after only a few minutes. The peaceful domesticity of the moment brought a wide smile to her face.


	2. Wilted Rose

_December 15, 2016_

She crushed the Skaraax spike under the edge of her boot and threw herself to the side as the other arm's swing came her way. Deadly poison dripped from the long, red spikes protruding from the well-muscled upper limbs that reached for her.

"And I thought our chat had been going so well," she quipped, side-stepping a charge from the lumbering alien. "No need to lose your temper."

The Chief Commander of the Skaraax excursionary force on Earth spat obscenities at the blonde woman and she laughed humourlessly, raising a black pistol-like object towards him and pulling the trigger when he turned back her way. The electrodes fixed themselves to his chest. He dropped to the floor with a loud crack and convulsed for a moment. She pulled long, plastic ties from a pocket on the interior of her coat and secured his hands.

"Now, Commander, how about we try that again?"

* * *

Hours later, Rose Tyler sat in her small office at U.N.I.T. Cardiff, fuming. She was carefully dressing a laceration she'd sustained when the _absolute idiot_ that Torchwood had sent had managed to offend the very proud Skaraaxean Commander's heritage which had launched him into a rage.

Pritchard, from Torchwood, had been taken from the room on a stretcher and neck brace. Rose, for her part, had sustained only a few cuts and bruises, only one of which required any care. Five years since she'd left Torchwood, she huffed to herself, and they still managed to drive her round the bend on a regular basis.

She hissed through clenched teeth as she pulled the laceration at her collarbone closed and applied butterfly strips to keep it that way. After covering it with gauze and tape, she cleaned up her supplies and pulled her jacket back on. Rose saw no need to disturb the branch office nurse to tend her. U.N.I.T. Cardiff had only three office employees, an outpost more than a proper satellite office, and the other two were out for the afternoon. Troops at the base outside the city would be practicing drills and Rose debated joining them but decided she'd dealt with enough today. Her head was throbbing, her muscles were screaming, and every time she closed her eyes she could see the sneering face of that little gobshite from Torchwood.

Rose was not generally given to violence as a first solution, her activities of the morning notwithstanding, but Marcus Pritchard was just one of those people with a face that begged to be punched and every time he opened his mouth, the temptation grew. She had barely restrained herself when he had begun his nattering on about Torchwood's interest in the Commander.

Five years since she had left, and this was still the best offworld liaison they could find. She snorted to herself, feeling very superior for a moment and congratulating herself on her decision to leave the organization

She locked the door to her office – or what passed for an office but was best described as a closet with a printer – and made her way down the creaking stairs, her mind on the organization that had both saved and condemned her.

There had been whispers as soon as she'd started at Torchwood, of course. The Director's mysterious daughter with a past shrouded in mystery was an anomaly of the sort that the organization rarely tolerated without investigation, but any attempt to probe her past had been quashed. That she was granted almost immediate access to the highest levels of the Institute had ruffled more than a few feathers. Rose knew that Pete had been heavy-handed with his integration of his newfound daughter, forcing her in like a square peg through a round hole, but he had wanted to ensure that Torchwood was staffed by those he could trust.

It was only when she had moved to the dimension cannon project that the whispers stopped following her everywhere, and that had only been because she worked with a very carefully selected team that worked primarily through academic research laboratories. Theoretical physicists had welcomed them, and extended an even warmer welcome to the influx of cash that followed the young hotshot researchers.

When Rose's paperwork had been fabricated out of whole cloth in this universe, Pete had ensured it reflected that she'd done well on her A-levels. Though she had not sat her exams in her own universe, years of learning at the Doctor's side had provided her a far deeper education than any coursework could. She had used her new educational status to publish her research, earning her MPhys while working at Torchwood which had put many of her critics to rest.

Growing up on the Estate, Rose had never felt as though university would be an option for her. Most people stayed in school only so long as it took to write their GCSEs and then they'd work. Rose had done much the same, having left school to follow Jimmy Stone around at the age of 16 with the expectation she'd never return to school. She had never excelled in school, and had been glad to leave it behind, but long after admitted to herself that she had never really made any effort to do well. She had felt it was not worth her effort to achieve academically if she was just going to work in a shop or a hair salon for the rest of her life.

But during her travels with the Doctor, Rose had found her natural curiosity piqued and her desire to understand the universe in its entirety grew. Many evenings were spent ensconced in the TARDIS library with a book in her lap or listening, rapt, to the Doctor as he explained some phenomenon or mathematical law, or the cultural context of a historical event they would soon visit. She had received an elaborately immersive education, and she had taken to it with gusto, finding that her intellect needed only some nurturing to come into its own. Rose had spent many nights wondering how many other promising scientific minds went stagnant in the small plot of the council estate, deprived of the nourishment they needed to grow.

She would never be able to calculate huge products in her head at the drop of a hat, she would never hold a candle to the Doctor, but she had developed a fluency which allowed her to understand the flowing language of mathematics that covered the whiteboard in her former lab.

Thoughts of the small laboratory workspace she had shared at uni cast her mind back to her graduation several months ago, when she had finally been addressed as Doctor Tyler, but she shied away from that painful memory. Proud as she was to have achieved what she did, the day had been soured and she could no longer draw any happiness from the memory.

She slammed that door in her mind. Not now. Not yet. Not here.

Rose pulled out her small diary after pulling closed the door of her small car. She made a note of her work on the negotiations this morning and scheduled a time to complete her report. She'd been well enough known before she had left Torchwood that a number of her contacts refused to speak to any human government without her as an intermediary, and her schedule filled up easily most days.

It took only fifteen minutes to drive home. She dropped her blue bag by the door, unlaced her boots, and went to start the kettle for tea. Neglected flooring creaked under her feet, her socks swishing softly over the ancient lino as Rose made her way to the back of her flat, to the small bedroom that was her own. Her blacks – standard-issue U.N.I.T. daily dress, black battle dress uniform suitable for combat - and t-shirt were cast off into the basket soon enough and she pulled jeans and a soft jumper from her wardrobe. It took her only a moment to pull on the soft, well-loved knit jumper and her favourite well-worn jeans.

A soft click, louder for the silence of the rest of the flat, sounded as she switched on the light in the washroom. She pulled off the makeshift bandage to examine the laceration at her clavicle. The inflammation was already starting to abate and it no longer throbbed. She applied some antibiotic gel, but still expected the injury would be gone within a day. Her wounds usually were.

Rose looked over her face as she brushed her hair out of the severe bun she was required to wear with her uniform. Her skin was now devoid of the heavy makeup she had worn in her younger years. Even she could see the weight of years, of pain, in her own eyes. Her fair skin was still pale and soft as it had been when she had last looked. As it had been every day for the last ten years. Not a wrinkle, not a freckle. Not a single crinkle or crease despite her hard life, even though she was nearly thirty by the calendar, but much older in her own linear time.

The Doctor and Rose had travelled together for two years by her calendar timeline. But when she added up the doubling back, the days that never were, the months spent suspended in the Time Vortex, Rose knew it had been well over four years that they had been together, as best she could figure. She had, since then, spent over four years working her way back to him after they had been separated at Canary Wharf, only to find out that her original universe was asynchronous with the one in which she now lived. That the timelines of the two universes did not seem to experience a linear relationship had been a matter of frustration to her, and Rose had long ago stopped trying to figure out precisely how old she was.

She flicked off the light, ending her inspection, and quickly re-wove her hair into a messy plait, a style she'd adopted for its convenience. Her trusty white kettle switched off as she re-entered her small kitchen and she poured some water in a mug to warm it as she reached for the bags of fragrant tea she favoured. It didn't hold a candle to her favourite tea, a powerful, spicy infusion she had once savoured at a bazaar on some out of the way moon. The Doctor had gifted her with a large tin of the beautiful tea on her birthday – as near as they could figure – that year; the scent of the blue and violet petals of her Ayurian spiceflower tea had greeted her every morning for months. Rose wondered if the Doctor still had it. The sweet but peppery imported tea was Earth's closest approximation, but lacked the soul of her birthday gift from so long ago.

A moment later, steaming mug tea in hand, she stood before the one closed door in her flat. Like the others, it was white and undecorated, bearing only a tarnished metal lever for a handle. Her hand shook as she reached for the handle, and she rested it there a moment, taking a breath to steel herself against the onslaught of memories.

Six months today.

It was time to open the door.

She slowly pushed the lever down and the door opened silently into a bedroom larger than her own.

A dark blue wardrobe stood in the corner of the room, deep in shadow, a flat-packed contraption they had picked up at some chain store. She remembered with a smile the day they had attempted to get the large box into the flat. It was not the first time she had regretted leasing the third floor walk-up. She had fallen on her bum at the bottom of the steps and had pulled him down into the grass with her. They had laughed, all full of joy and promise for a long future.

Rose ran a hand over the paneled door of the blue wardrobe, reminiscent of a different blue box that had done far more than hold clothes. She fingered the deep gouge in the front panel, where in a fit of rage and despair he had thrown his tray across the room.

Night was descending on Cardiff when she glanced out the window. The orange glow of streetlights outlined the window against the wall. She did not need light to know what was here. A finger of light touched the very top of the bed, and Rose reached over to smooth her hand over it.

The cold plastic handle on the headboard was rough under her fingers. Her eyes turned, at last, to the rest of the bed, the place she had avoided settling her gaze. A black plastic-covered mattress, stripped of its linens, rested on a frame of steel and plastic. Levers here and there were marked with colourful instructions, the cheeriness of the bright colours absurd in this room that still hung thick with despair.

He had hated hospitals. It would never have done for him to die in one.

Rose hated him for it, sometimes. For his forcing her to see him deteriorate with intimate detail. Not that she ever would have let anyone else care for him at the end. The room still smelled of the antiseptics she had used on every surface after his body had been taken away. Dust and antiseptics. His scent was gone.

Rose dropped onto the edge of the plastic mattress, the bed making a number of sharp creaks as it adjusted to her weight. Her fingers clutched at the folded-down hand rail at either side of her thighs. She curled inward, drawing her knees up to her chest, heels on the edge of the bed, her voice coming in rapid gasps as she attempted to regain her control.

"I hate you," she sobbed to no one, her soft voice carrying across the silent flat. The silence, the loneliness, drove her to anger. "You left me here!" She shrieked at the nearly empty room, throwing her mug against the wall where it exploded in an unsatisfying crash, hot liquid and shattered ceramic spraying outwards. "What happened to forever?"

The light outside the window flickered and dimmed, but the darkness had no response.


	3. Pyre

June 3, 2016

" _In the field of experimental physics, the degree of Doctor Philosophiae is awarded to Rose Tyler."_

 _Her silk-lined scarlet robe swished softly over the dark wool of the formal uniform worn beneath. The sun caught her violet sleeves as she climbed the few steps to the stage._ Breathe _, Rose told herself._ Don't trip _. She reached the smiling chancellor who clasped her hand in both of his own. His lips moved, forming words of congratulation, but Rose did not hear them. She felt the soft, warm skin of his hands leave her own as he turned to grasp the black leather folio which held her degree._

 _Degree in hand, she shook the hands of the line of robed scholars who, smiling, bid her congratulations for her achievement. She could not hear the thousand people in the amphitheatre, nor the words of the academics who had guided her over the previous years. She smiled and nodded in response to their unheard words. Her eyes darted from the face of the Dean of the Faculty of Science to the shadows at thefar side of the auditorium, well away from the stage._

 _He came._

 _The man met her eyes, even at this distance, and flashed her a weak smile. Rose ached to step towards him, but was ushered along, back to her seat. Once seated, she craned her neck in an attempt to see back into the shadows, but he was gone._

 _The convocation dragged on for another hour. Speakers and awards, pomp and circumstance and modern interpretations of ancient ceremony. Nearly a thousand years this institution had stood and it seemed determined to squeeze some acknowledgement of every single one of those years into the day. Rose stifled a yawn more than once._

 _She donned her mortarboard cap as she exited the hall into the bright sunlight of a June day. It didn't take long before she had the air knocked out of her by a blonde blur rushing at her to throw his arms around her ribs in a crushing hug. "Thanks, Tony," she huffed as he let her go, a laugh bubbling up from within her._

" _Doctor Tyler," the nine year old said, grinning. "Sounds good don't it?"_

" _Yeah, yeah I think it does," she agreed with a grin, the tip of her tongue peeking out between her teeth. "God, it's weird to hear that, though."_

" _Congratulations, sweetheart," cried her mum, approaching with open arms to collect her daughter in a tight hug. "I am so proud of you." Jackie's voice was thick with emotion as she spoke into her daughter's hair. "So proud."_

 _Pete ambled towards them, clasping the shoulder of an acquaintance in greeting as he wove his way through the teeming crowd of people in fine dress interspersed with ebullient graduates in academicals._

" _Well done, Doctor Tyler," he said with a grin, extending his hand to Rose. She took his hand, shaking it once, firmly. Professionally. A decade she had been his acknowledged daughter, but he still couldn't bring himself to hug her spontaneously. Rose's heart clenched a bit, wondering if her real dad would have hugged her._

" _Let's have a picture, Rose. Over here." Jackie tugged her along by her arm, out of the crowd. "Tony, take my phone and take a couple will you?"_

 _In the shade of a towering white oak. Jackie and Pete's arms came around Rose's shoulders and all three beamed at the camera. The youngest Tyler snapped a few photos with the phone before handing it back. For the next quarter hour, Rose didn't speak a word as Jackie had her move this way and that, pose with Tony or Pete, or under a particular tree, or in the sunlight._

" _Mum, you must have a hundred pictures by now," she sighed before opening her mouth wide to stretch her jaw, the ache of forced smiles burning lightly. "My cheeks are starting to hurt." She glanced around for Pete who she spotted up the stairs, chatting amiably with the chancellor._

 _Jackie huffed, hand on her hip and looked at her daughter with a severe expression. "Now, Rose. This is a big day! You're the first to graduate uni in generations. Let me be a little excited for you if you won't be for yourself. This is a happy occasion and I haven't seen a real smile out of you yet."_

" _Mum…" Tony droned. Jackie's eyebrows shot up and she opened her mouth to chide him, but Rose cut in._

" _Mum, I am happy. Really." She offered as genuine a smile as she could. "It's just been a long day and that speaker would just not shut up." Mollified, Jackie's expression softened._

" _Well, if I can drag your father away we might get to our dinner reservations before Tony's getting his own degree." She turned and scanned the crowd for her husband. "Oi! Pete!"_

 _He turned, a bit startled, and waved at her in acknowledgement. Obviously bidding goodbye to the woman he was speaking with, he made his way back towards them, whipping out his phone to text their driver to pick them up._

"' _M just going to run in to change, 'kay?" She didn't wait for their response before making her way back into the building to shuck the too-warm academic garb._

 _Turning the corner back towards the side room that had been set aside for the women to change in, she broke out into a wide grin. Sitting by the small table placed at the end of the corridor, she saw the unmistakeable silhouette of messy hair and the shine of those specs he'd always been fond of._

" _You came," she breathed, rushing toward the man by the window._

 _He took a deep breath, his eyes closing at the effort. "Of course." Another breath. "Now I can call_ you _Doctor too." He reached out a skeletal hand, placed it on her arm, and looked up into her eyes, a thready smile on his chapped lips. The soft sound of his oxygen concentrator hummed below the level of her notice._

 _Rose had seen him just that morning, as she'd bid him goodbye and turned his care over to the visiting nurse. He'd seemed too weak to come and she had called to cancel the transport._

 _But here he was, his usually dull eyes shining with pride. He wore his beloved blue suit, though it was clear it hung over a thinner frame. His brown hair, thick and wild as ever, was styled in the organized chaos he'd always loved. She put her hand over his and took a seat beside him in the velvet-upholstered chairs nearest him._

" _So," he said softly, taking as deep a breath as he was able. "Is it Captain Doctor Tyler or Doctor Captain Tyler now?" His smile grew a bit and she shook her head in response._

" _It's Rose, just Rose. Look at me, collecting titles like that, though," she quirked a smile at him. "Who'd have thought – girl from the estates like me." She laughed softly._

 _He raised her hand to his lips, planting a soft kiss on her knuckles. "I never doubted your brilliance."_

" _First time I met you, you called my entire species stupid apes." The sparkle in her eyes made it clear she was only teasing._

 _He shrugged. "Exceptions to every rule." They lapsed into companionable silence, hands joined and resting on the small table. He looked out the window, the light filtered through the leaves of the ancient oaks outside, throwing the lines of his face into sharp relief. His cheeks were dark hollows, outlined by the transparent tubing that supplied his oxygen, his eyes sunken to deep pools. Rose looked down at their hands, his so frail over her own._

 _She had to think hard to remember the days, years past now, when his body had hummed with vibrant energy, with sheer joy at being alive. When he had been unable to stay still for even a moment. Even sitting down to tea, he'd have one leg bouncing at all times. The man who sat across from her, stillness etched into his every feature, was not the man she had travelled the universe with. He was an echo, a shadow, of the Doctor he had been._

" _Will you come out to eat with us? Mum's got reservations at some posh Portuguese place…"_

" _No, I think I'll head back." He paused, breathing deeply. "Wouldn't want to slow you up on your special day." Rose could see the skin pulling in around his collarbones with each laborious breath._

" _John, please come," she pleaded, using the name he'd taken as his own. "If you're up for it, that is."_

 _He shook his head slowly. "Not today. But I do have something for you." He withdrew a thin package from inside his jacket and pushed it across the table to her._

 _She moved to open the shiny blue paper, but he stilled her with a hand. "Later. Go spend time with your family now." He pulled her hand to his lips again. "Congratulations, Rose."_

" _Thank you. It means a lot that you came." Rose stood and bent over to kiss his cheek gently. "I'll see you later, yeah?"_

" _Yeah." He pushed a lock of hair behind her ear and dropped his hand to the arm of his wheelchair. Rose glanced down the hall and saw his attendant. With a gentle squeeze of his shoulder, she turned away, entering the changing room to shed her gown._

 _She wasn't hungry anymore._

* * *

 _There was no later for them._

 _Rose entered her Cardiff flat a couple hours later, having driven straight home, and noted immediately the absence of sound. No monitor, no concentrator. No tap-tap-tap of the attendant nurse texting her friends as John slept. There was nothing save silence._

 _She found the note from her neighbour on her kitchen table a moment later._

Your phone is off. Maria's at A&E with John – University Hospital.

Go as soon as you see this and turn on your phone.

-Colin

 _Rose's stomach dropped to her feet. Still clad in her woolen dress uniform, hair plaited neatly at the nape of her neck, she turned on a heel and bolted out the door. She had no recollection of the mad rush to the hospital; it seemed only a moment later she was at the information desk in A &E._

" _John Lord. Came in with a nurse," she panted._

" _Are you family?" the clerk asked evenly, glancing_

" _Yes. Where is he?"_

 _The clerk rose and came round the desk. "Follow me, please." She waved her badge over a reader, opening the sliding doors that separated the waiting and treatment areas. "Down the left, last room on the right."_

 _Without even pausing to thank her, Rose strode off in the indicated direction._

 _He wasn't in the room when she reached it, but she found his nurse attendant rise to meet her. "Rose," she breathed in relief._

" _What happened?" Rose ground out, eyes jumping left and right, attempting to find any sign of him._

" _He's at CT," the plump woman told her, taking Rose's hand firmly, she guided her to a seat. "We think he's had a stroke."_

 _She was grateful for the nurse's hand on hers as the air rushed out of the room. She knew this was likely, with his deteriorating condition, but that made the news no easier to bear._

" _When? What happened?" she repeated her question, softly this time. Distant._

 _Maria patted her hand gently. "We were on our way back from Oxford in the transfer van and he just couldn't focus. He…" she paused, closing her eyes. "He seized. Badly. Was barely breathing when we got here."_

 _Rose felt tears prick at her closed eyelids. "What did the doctors say?"_

" _Took him straightaway to CT. We only just got here a little while ago."_

 _At that moment, the porter came in, pulling a wheeled bed behind him. He reconnected the cardiac leads from the mobile monitor on the bed to the wall-mounted one beside it and then exited without saying a word._

 _John lay on the bed, his face peaceful in apparent sleep. His chest rose and fell slowly, the pale skin around his clavicles drawing in with each breath. Rose stepped over to stand beside him, taking his hand in her own. His skeletal fingers were pale against her sun-darkened skin._

 _She looked up as the doctor entered. Dr. Gwen Davies, a formidable Welshwoman in her late fifties, was someone Rose knew well from U.N.I.T. before the physician had left to pursue the somewhat less strenuous field of emergency medicine. It was only to her that Rose trusted John's care, owing to his physiological quirks, and she knew that Gwen would have seen him at home had she not been at the hospital today. Rose's breath caught in her throat at the unfamiliar sight of sorrow in the dark-haired woman's eyes._

 _Gwen stood opposite Rose and met her gaze. "I am so sorry, Rose. John's had a very significant bleed into his brain." She took a deep breath, steeling herself for what came next. Rose's heart thumped wildly in her chest. "There is no coming back from this."_

 _Surprising herself with her ability to keep her voice level, Rose asked, "Are we at the end?"_

" _I'm afraid so," the doctor said quietly._

" _Then let me take him home."_

* * *

 _Officially, John Lord was born in Exmouth. January 1_ _st_ _, 1981. Only son of Ulysses and Penelope Lord, both of London, and raised mostly in Essex._

 _But those who loved him knew the truth._

 _He was from the planet Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous. He was the last of his people while at once being the very first– the only human-Time Lord biological metacrisis to exist._

 _Officially, he died of a brain bleed secondary to metastatic cancer, at home with his wife on June 15_ _th_ _, 2016, in Cardiff, aged 35 years._

 _He was, in truth, over nine hundred years old at his death and had spent the majority of his life protecting all of creation. He was also only five years old, a body forged in the heat of battle. An old soul in a young body; poisoned by the very process that had created it._

 _Officially, John Lord was cremated at Thornhill._

 _Rose Tyler built the funeral pyre by the side of a river, deep in the woods, along the line of the rift. Tony helped, carrying the driest brush he could find to line between the layers of logs. In telling her the story of his last encounter with the Master, John had described the funerary rites of his people. While she knew she could not speak the ancient words in the rolling, musical tongue of the Time Lords, she could do this for him._

 _The people who called him family gathered and, together, carried the far-too-light, red-shrouded body to the pyre and lay him among the fragrant boughs._

 _Rose, Tony, Jackie, Pete, and Gwen stood silently, reflecting on the enigmatic man they had all loved in their own ways as the blue sky gave way to the orange of dusk._

 _There was no ceremony, no words of hope or comfort spoken. Rose lit a branch of apple wood and circled the pyre, lighting the layers of dry brush as she went._

 _Her tongue tripped on the syllables of the only Gallifreyan she had ever learned, as she spoke his name into the fire that rose to consume what remained of the man once known as the Doctor._


	4. Did You Get the Memo?

It started with a memo, as most office drama did.

Most office drama, however, didn't involve weaponry, along with any number of interestingly useful devices, from other worlds.

The dimension cannon project had been decommissioned after her return; its files burnt, equipment disassembled. With the worlds now sealed off for good, it would no longer function. The Director of Torchwood, Peter Tyler, reallocated his dimensional physicists to other projects.

Rose was placed with Marc Dagenais, an experienced silver-haired veteran, to be trained as an official interplanetary liaison – making official the part she'd played for nearly five years already – as a supplement to the research work that Doctor Carron had requested her for. Years spent traipsing from one planet to the next had prepared her well, though she and the Doctor had never felt the need to train themselves for combat, a requirement of Torchwood liaisons, considering wits to be the greatest weapons.

Five months into her on-the-job training with Marc, she'd received an email from Director: Operations Gina Johns, a subordinate of Pete's who had lost her family in the Cyber War.

The memo was brief, and to the point.

 _All appointments on the attached Conflict of Interest report are immediately rescinded._

Rose's name was one of only four on the list. She had, in a heartbeat, found herself out of a job because Pete had been the one to place her in it.

John Lord had had his position as an external consultant immediately terminated as well. Two young security guards whose parents had achieved supervisory status rounded out the list.

The order, she later learned, had come from above Torchwood. The president of Great Britain – a title Rose still found herself having trouble speaking – Harriet Jones had sent instructions directly to Gina Johns.

Rose found herself, all of a sudden, at the very bottom of the Torchwood hierarchy. A lowly research assistant, nothing more. Johns had been unable to take away her research job as Pete's post as director had had nothing to do with it; Carron had requested she assist him after the publication of her master's thesis.

She had started quietly investigating Gina Johns and President Jones, but before long found her efforts hindered. Her computer access was slowly eroded. She could not access the same databases as she had previously, and her access codes opened fewer directories. Less and less information was available to her as, very gradually, the people she had befriended in IT found themselves transferred, terminated, or assigned to field work, so Rose did the only sensible thing she could manage.

She resigned from Torchwood.

U.N.I.T. had contacted her by day's end and offered her a commission – she'd be a _Captain_ – and her choice of location for her posting.

To her delight, they'd agreed to allow her to continue her studies with Doctor Carron, for whom they arranged a faculty appointment at Oxford. Rose had been registered as his PhD student. She had U.N.I.T. to thank for her doctorate, much as she had Torchwood to thank for her MPhys.

Daughter of one of the richest men in Britain and she'd never paid a pound in school fees. She couldn't help but laugh whenever she thought about it.

Six months following her return to Pete's World, as she and the Doctor – John – had taken to calling it, she had a new job, a new flat she shared with John as their fledgling relationship took wing, and a position as a Ph.D. student at Oxford. Richard Carron was a kindly supervisor, requiring her at the university only occasionally which allowed her to choose Cardiff, for its likelihood of being a good location to grow a TARDIS, as her base of operations. Her work was primarily theoretical, and she had more than enough computing power at home to compute the dimensional models they were working on.

It was the happiest she had been in years, not that it would last.

* * *

Gina Johns remained a thorn in Rose's side well after her resignation from Torchwood. She'd attempted to block a number of Rose's official functions with U.N.I.T. and had made quite a nuisance of herself any time Rose attempted to schedule meetings with offworld contacts. It was why, on this surprisingly warm and sunny Sunday morning in December, Rose found herself ensconced in a dark, windowless room in U.N.I.T.U.K. headquarters beneath the Tower, where she had found herself each Sunday for the last month.

Timothy, the Major's executive assistant, scampered in with a paper cup of coffee for her. Rose thanked him as he breezed out of the room, taking a sip of the scalding beverage as her eyes scanned back and forth over the screen before her, reviewing the activity logs of the last week for one of their monitoring channels.

"Erisa," she called to the other room. "I've got something."

Major Erisa Magambo strode into the room, dressed, like Rose, in casual attire. Sundays in the Tower were informal affairs.

"What is it?"

"It's one of the codes John warned about," she said, tapping the small blue book on the desk beside her. "Just came up - something going on here. Seems it's a web-based subnet comm channel, like he said it would be. Can you get an echo of it? Was yesterday from the look of it."

"Maybe." She pushed Rose aside, fingers flying over the keyboard. "I think this is it, but I'm not hearing anything."

Rose looked over the commands in the shell that Erisa had opened. While she would never be as adept with the U.N.I.T. computer system as her friend and commanding officer, she didn't see anything that jumped out at her as wrong. "Are we receiving any data?"

Erisa typed in another short string and perused the information that came up in response. "Looks like it. Computer's recording. Should be able to hear what's going on. Don't know why we can't."

They spent another minute poring over the command lines, disconnecting and reconnecting from the feed.

"I am a bleeding idiot," Rose groaned. She reached over and used the scroll wheel on the mouse to increase the volume, which had been muted.

Erisa burst into peals of laughter, but sobered quickly as the voices of Gina Johns and Harriet Jones came through the speakers.

"… _Friday. How's Red?"_ Jones was saying.

Gina seemed to scoff _. "As expected. No surprises there. We'll be ready when you give us the go."_

" _You'd better be. You know we can't afford any of your screw-ups on this."_

" _Iran was_ not _my fault"_ came the icy reply from the Torchwood Director of Operations. Rose mouthed 'Iran?' to Erisa, who shrugged.

" _Yes, it was. Just don't fuck this one up. You'll hear from me soon. Usual channels."_

" _Understood."_ The channel died. Erisa closed the command shell.

"Sounds like we missed everything important," Magumbo said.

Rose shrugged "Should be recorded, anyway. Can you play it back?"

A moment's clicking later and the conversation began.

The President's unmistakeable voice began. _"Crow 2, Lynx here. Are you in?"_

" _Yes. Clearance seven-seven-two. Identify please."_

" _Clearance four-seven-four-eight. I want an update."_

" _Timeline has been met. See the report delivered Friday – should be accurate to the hour."_

" _Have you confirmed access?"_

" _Weeks ago. We're set and ready to go, honestly. I confirmed all of this last week."_ Johns' voice was clipped, her tone annoyed.

" _And you will confirm it again as many times as I request,"_ Jones responded, her words laced with venom. _"You need to be ready for Friday. How's red?"_

Rose stopped the playback and leaned back in her seat.

"Well, that was cryptic," Erisa said unnecessarily. "What did she mean about Iran?"

"Haven't a clue. I think Friday's more important than figuring that out, though. What's Friday?"

"The twenty third." Erisa leaned back as well, taking a long drink of her coffee.

"Twenty third… the twenty third of December." Rose's eyes widened and her mouth ran dry. "It's the Torchwood Christmas party at the mansion."

Erisa's lips drew into a tight line. "Well, I guess you'll be attending this year after all."

Rose had been _unofficially_ uninvited to Pete's Christmas parties since her departure from Torchwood five years prior. As someone who had left Torchwood in the lurch on an important project when she had resigned and dragged a primary researcher away with her, it was understood that she wasn't precisely welcome, even if as daughter of the host no one would stop her.

Her strained relationship with Pete had her feeling awkward as her finger hovered over his name in her contacts list. Swallowing her hesitation, she tapped the entry for Pete Tyler, Dir. Torchwood Institute.

"Rose?" he asked a moment later, not bothering with a greeting. She rarely called. "Everything alright?"

"Um, yeah. Yeah, nothing wrong. I was just wondering if I could come to the Christmas party next week." No need to dance around the reason for her call. "I know it's last minute, but I was hoping to see Tony and Mum. I'm on call at Christmas so I'll be stuck in Cardiff and I won't get to see them and…"

"Rose, Rose, it's okay," he assured, cutting off her rambling. "Your mum will be thrilled to see you. You know how she is with these things." He sounded amused.

She breathed a sigh of relief. Easier than she thought.

"Do you need me to send a car?"

"No, I'll be fine to drive up after work. What time is it at?"

"Starts 'round seven."

"Okay. You sure it won't be a problem for anyone?" she asked hesitantly. Of course it would be. Much of the upper management at Torchwood loathed her.

Pete chuckled. "'Course not." He knew the lie as well as she did. "Everyone'll love to see you again. Been a while."

"'Kay. I'll see you Friday, then?"

"Sure thing." Pete and Rose said their goodbyes and rang off.

Erisa, who had sat quietly by as Rose called her dad – stepdad? She'd still not completely figured that part out – smiled widely at her. "So, what're you going to wear?"

Rose dropped her forehead to the desk. "Uuuugh," she groaned, remembering her mum's requirement that she never wear a special occasion dress twice. Erisa laughed at her friend's dismay then set the computer to continue logging, and dragged the blonde woman towards the door.

"Won't hear a word out of you. This is official U.N.I.T. work so we can use the organization credit card. Come on now. To the shops!"

* * *

A zipped garment bag hung in the back seat of her car for the three hour drive from Cardiff to her parents' London manor. Rose had been honest when she informed Pete that she was on call over Christmas. What she had neglected to tell him was that it was her own choice to cover the Christmas call shifts so her coworkers could be home with their children. Rose knew that this Christmas would be hard, and so she had decided to keep herself busy, even if it meant her mum and Tony would be disappointed at her absence.

Deciding at the last minute to go up a day early to surprise her family, Rose had loaded her dress and the presents for her family into her Mini and made for London on Thursday morning.

"Mum!" she called into the house, pushing open the kitchen door with her hip as she entered with her garment bag in one hand, blue knapsack containing presents in the other.

She stepped through the large kitchen and ran towards the sweeping main staircase in the entry hall. Bounding up two stairs at a time, she listened for the telltale sounds of her mother ordering the event staff about. A man passed her by, a vase containing an ornate arrangement of flowers, greenery, and holly clasped in his hands. He craned his neck to the side to see around it and nodded in greeting, with a clipped "Good day," when he spotted Rose. The vaguely terrified look in his eyes confirmed her mum was back in her element. In this way, Jackie Tyler had stepped into her parallel counterpart's shoes easily enough. She'd proven a natural at ordering people about when she followed Pete back to his own universe.

Listening carefully, it became apparent that Jackie was still deep in discussion with some sort of vendor so Rose turned right, down the hall lined with soft cream carpet that would take her to Tony's school room. She pushed open the door quietly and peeked in.

The young boy pushed his unruly blonde fringe from his eyes, not tearing his gaze away from the book in front of him. Rose spotted Mister George, Tony's maths tutor. He was the very stereotype of an academic; tweed jacket, thick glasses, perfectly straight posture, as rigid as the expectations placed on his young charge, and he spoke in BBC English. Tony, for his part, had risen to the challenges Mister George – who never permitted anyone to call him by his Christian name – had placed before him. Rose had watched with interest over the previous years as the youngest Tyler bloomed under the one-on-one guidance of the array of tutors Pete had employed.

Rose marveled, not for the first time, at how different Tony's upbringing was from hers. While he had the best of everything that could be provided him and lived in a veritable palace, he was a profoundly lonely little boy. Rose, for her part, had spent her childhood in the constant company of many friends, and she spent her days outside of school roaming the estate with her friends, finding themselves in all sorts of childish trouble.

There had been no encouragement from Jackie for Rose to better herself; in fact, she'd not hesitated to remind Rose of her place in the world. Her decision to not pursue her A-levels had been met with apathy and a reminder that Henrik's was hiring, though Jackie later spoke negatively of the shop, telling Rose her work there was giving her _airs and graces._

But Tony was given every opportunity and unending encouragement. The golden child of the Tyler clan, he had an unending parade of OxBridge educated tutors teaching him maths and English, history, science, even Latin and classical literature, in his own home and at his own pace. He was receiving the best, most comprehensive education that money could buy and it appeared to Rose to be money well spent. He was brilliant.

As she watched the youngest Tyler's sky-blue eyes dart left to right over the maths text he was reading, intent on understanding some new topic that had been put before him, her heart clenched a little in her chest. Tony was brilliant, with a mind that could change the world, but she felt the ache of his loneliness radiating from him, particularly since John's death.

Deciding to do what she could to alleviate the broken heart of Antony Tyler, Rose pushed the door open the rest of the way and grinned as she saw his eyes light up as he darted out of the chair and collided with her in a hug.


	5. Knock Knock

Chapter 4

Rose sat down to tea with her mum and Tony. Jackie had given the cook the week off so she could travel home to see her grown children, so they shared simple fare at the kitchen table, seeing no need for the formal dining room just for the three of them.

Jackie was going on about some minor drama with a congressman's wife in excruciating detail to which Rose was paying absolutely no attention besides reminding herself to nod and make affirmative noises occasionally. She was playing over the conversation she and Erisa had intercepted.

Monday had resulted in no further clarity. They'd collected no other information and Rose felt blind. She'd spent the early afternoon sweeping the property with every detection device U.N.I.T. had been able to spare. With Erisa's help, she had arranged for a number of tactical squad members to be present as servers at the party the next evening.

They had a credible threat, a likely setting, and an event granting wide open access to the Tyler family which couldn't be cancelled lest they give a bright, flashing sign the treacherous elements within Torchwood that U.N.I.T. was onto them. Her family was bait, she knew it, and there was nothing she could do about it.

"Where's Pete?" Rose asked when her mother – finally – paused for breath.

Jackie sipped her tea and crooked her lips pensively. "Could be home anytime. He's been at the office all hours this week. Something to do with that ambassador or something."

"The excursionary force. I'm working on it too. How's Pritchard?"

"How should I know? He's your dad's employee, I don't keep up on their goings on."

"Yes you do, mum. The world would end if you didn't know every bit of drama going on in that tower," Rose laughed.

"Well I never," Jackie huffed in mock annoyance before continuing at the rapid clip she often used whilst gossiping. "But anyway, Marcus won't be at the party, poor dear. Broke something important, Pete said. Weeks to heal."

"Serves the idiot right."

"That's rude," Tony piped up, looking up from the handheld video game that had been occupying his attention and casting Rose a disapproving look. "He was just doing his job."

"Poorly, and he could of got himself an' me killed because he didn't do his job right, Tony."

"Enough of that sort of talk, Rose. It's Christmas." Jackie looked over at Tony. "Did you tell Rose what you want Santa Claus to bring you?"

"I'm too old for that nonsense, mum," the boy groaned with all the world weariness a nine year old could muster. "But I did tell dad I want a modular computing kit. There's a shop online that has kits with a thousand components so I can build computers and robots and 3D printers so that I can make my own iterating robots that build more printers to build more robots so that I can have all the robots I want."

Smiling at his enthusiasm, Rose reached over to ruffle his pale locks, much to Tony's annoyance. "Well, can't say you ask for much."

"It's only one thing," he challenged. "Just one kit. And about five hundred pounds for materials for my robot army."

Jackie and Rose both winced at that. It only took a moment for Tony, who was born after the Cyber War, to catch on. "Robot army might not be the best choice of words." Shooting the women an apologetic look, he took a biscuit from the plate on the table and scampered off with his game.

Rose swallowed the last bite of her sandwich, enjoying the balance of flavours that only her mum could manage perfectly.

"Not that I mind, but why are you really here, Rose?" Jackie asked with her usual pointedness. Rose should have known her mum would pick up on something,

She took a sip of her tea before replying. "I really do want to see you guys. 'M working over Christmas so this was my only change."

"But…" Jackie prompted.

"Can't talk about it." Rose shrugged. Jackie huffed.

"That's all I ever get from you and Pete. It's enough to drive me barmy!"

The younger woman smiled apologetically at her mum. "I know, I'm sorry. Nothin' I can do about it, though. Can't tell you what I can't tell you. But really, I'm here early just to see you and Tony."

Patting her daughter's hand, Jackie sighed a bit. "I wish you and Pete would try harder to get on. You don't know what it's like for me and Tony with the two of you treating each other like this."

"It's between me an' him. That's all I'm going to say about it," Rose countered. She'd learned to set boundaries with her mum in recent years, thanks to John, and it had made her life so much more peaceful.

"All I'm saying is you should try," Jackie added, unable to let her daughter have the last word. "Now, I think I heard you mention presents to Tony…"

Rose returned empty teacup to her saucer, her expression serious. "I know what you're thinking. 'M saving it for his birthday. John didn't want him to have it until he's ten. Hard to believe that's just a few months away, though."

"Don't I know it. The things that child comes up with. Proper genius that one - I don't understand half of what comes out of his mouth, but it's pulling teeth to get him to put his socks in the hamper." Jackie shook her head in loving exasperation.

Rose laughed, remembering John's own tendency to leave things all over the flat. She sobered as the reality of his passing made her heart clench at the memory of him. Her mum reached across the table and covered Rose's hand with her own. "I know it's hard, sweetheart. The first Christmas after your dad died, I was in a right state. It will get easier, I promise."

She didn't want it to get easier. It would never be okay that he had died, that he had been taken from her so soon after they'd found their happiness.

"Where is Pete, anyway?"

"Said he'd be back before tea, but you know how things are. He's late as often as not." She glanced out the window, as if to look for his car coming up the drive. "He's not working from tomorrow until Boxing day, though, so at least he'll be here for the party. Oh! You haven't shown me your dress! Come on, let's go make sure it'll suit. And what about your hair?"

They made their way to Rose's room, opposite Tony's. Jackie exclaimed over Rose's scarlet dress and the gold-tone shoes she'd selected to go with it. While Jackie flipped through a magazine in search of a hairstyle she thought would work for Rose, Tony came running in. He closed the door to Rose's room and locked it from the inside. Jackie and Rose looked at the boy in alarm.

He panted, his eyes wide. "There's people here and I don't think they're friendly."

"What people, Tony?" Rose asked.

"They're wearing grey camouflage uniforms with the Torchwood symbol but I don't know them."

* * *

Across town, at Torchwood Tower, Pete Tyler was having a very bad day.

Gina Johns sat in his chair, her long legs crossed and resting on the corner of his desk. "You've been holding out on us, Pete." Filing a nail casually, she looked across the wide expanse of the desk at the man seated across from her.

Pete could feel blood dripping down his hands. The twisting of his wrists against the restraints had failed to find any weakness and had only caused the plastic to bite into his skin more deeply. His head ached, but he summoned all the loathing he could and glared at Johns. Blood dripped from the skin around his swollen right eye and fell on his once pristine white shirt. He sneered and spat towards her.

The tall, elegant woman waved towards one of her combats-clad guards. He took two steps towards the bound man and jammed the butt of his rifle against his abdomen.

"Now that was rude, Pete. Nothing you do is going to change what is going to happen. Only reason you're still alive is I haven't got clearance to kill you yet."

"Still someone's lapdog then, Johns?" he sneered at the woman who had been dragging Torchwood down a more militaristic path for the better part of a decade. Oh how he loathed her.

She smiled at him, perfect teeth shining in the low light of the office. "You can try all you like to rile me up, but I'm not the one tied to a chair with a gun to my head."

* * *

"Mum, Tony, get in the closet." Rose slipped her feet into her trainers and laced them quickly. She reached into her blue bag and pulled out her U.N.I.T.-issued pistol. Unlocking the door, she peeked out into the hall. A black-bereted soldier looked back at her and raised a rifle in her direction. She quickly drew her head back into her room and locked the door before he could pull the trigger. She ran for the closet, reaching into her ever-present blue bag.

"Put these on," she said forcefully, shoving silvery bracelets at her mum and Tony.

"What's going on Rose?" Jackie asked, confused but complying.

Rose took a deep breath and opened her mouth to reply, but her bedroom door blew open before she could speak. She twisted a control in her hand and saw her mum and Tony vanish in a flash of blue. Just as she donned her own transporter, one of the soldiers ripped open her closet door. She saw him raise his rifle to fire just as the world dissolved around her.

"ROSE!" her mum cried, throwing her arms around her daughter. Rose shook her off and dropped to her knees in front of Tony and pulled him to her. Her hands were shaking as she murmured praise to the boy who had saved all three of them.

They took a few minutes to collect themselves. Rose noted that Tony was wearing trainers, unlaced as he must have pulled them from his closet, but her mother wore only house slippers. The cool December air blew through her thin jumper, and Tony was starting to shiver. Rose reached into the knapsack and pulled out a soft hoodie which she pulled over Tony's head.

"Mum, do you have your mobile?" Jackie pulled it out from where she'd tucked it into the side of her bra earlier. Any other time, Rose would have found it funny, but for the moment, she could only be thankful for her mother's industrious use of undergarments. "Keep your transporters on, both of you," Rose ordered.

She dialed Pete's mobile number. It rang through to his voicemail. She tried his personal assistant. She didn't pick up. Rose ripped open the back of the mobile and pulled out the battery and network card to prevent them being tracked after their next jump. Returning the disassembled phone to her bag, she pulled out her own and sent a text to her last Torchwood contact.

 _Caesar?_

A minute later, the reply came.

 _March 15. Get out._

"We have to go."

"Go? Go where? Rose, what is going on? Where are we?" Jackie's voice was panicked. Her hands were resting on Tony's shoulders, her knuckles were white and Rose could see that she was trying not to shake.

"We're going somewhere safe and warmer, then we're being picked up. There's more going on here than you understand."

"Rose I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what is going on!"

"My god you stubborn woman!" Even she realized how much she sounded like John. "Shut up and let me save your bleedin' lives and then there will be time for questions later!" She twisted the control again, and the three of them lurched into interspace, materializing a moment later in a dark flat.

Rose reached into her blue bag and withdrew a holster which she wrapped around her waist. She holstered her pistol and pulled her small, silver mobile from her pocket. Dialing a number, she waited while the call connected. She typed in a code with the keypad and then closed the phone and repeated her earlier procedure to remove the battery and card.

"They can trace my transporter, it won't take them long to find us. We have to go."

"What about Pete?" Jackie asked. "We can't leave Pete. What the hell is going on, Rose?"

She looked around desperately. "They're coming for us and we have to get off this planet before they find us. One of my contacts is coming, they'll be here in a few minutes. We need to be outside when they get here." She made for the front door of the flat, but felt Tony's hand on her arm.

"Is dad dead?" Tony asked quietly, shaking off the stupor that had claimed him for the last several minutes. "He's dead, isn't he. Torchwood wouldn't be coming after us unless dad wasn't there anymore."

Rose hugged him tightly, unwilling to lie, but not wishing to break his heart. "I'm sorry, Tony." She saw his face crumple as tears pooled in his eyes and started running down his cheeks.

Jackie, overhearing, collapsed to the floor. "No," she gasped. "No he's not. He's at work."

"Mum, he's gone. My contact just confirmed it. They've turned on him and they are coming for us. We have to go and we have to go now or we're all dead. The Judoon won't wait."

Instructing Tony to keep close, she strode out of the flat and made for the stairs. Listening carefully, she waved Tony and Jackie onward. They made it to the street without incident.

"They'll find us here, it won't be long." As she spoke, the rumble of an approaching ship set off the alarms of cars along the road. A shadow fell over the street, blocking out the last of the December daylight.

"Both of you, shift!" They made their way onto the street, weaving between the stopped cars.

Rose dodged a fleeing pedestrian, keeping her firm grip on Tony's small hand. She looked behind her, and spotted Jackie sprinting to keep up.

She heard the clomping of combat boots on the asphalt before she caught sight of the soldier. She broke into a run, urging Tony onward. Panic rose in her throat at the realization that her sidearm was gone and Jackie was no longer behind her.

Rose whirled around, holding Tony tightly to her side. She caught sight of Jackie twenty feet away, who was holding Rose's pistol aimed at a man in the patchy, grey-white-and-black camouflage whose rifle was trained on Rose. The electric-shock feel of the Judoon transporter danced over her skin.

"MUM!" she screamed. "Come on!" Jackie turned, her focus on the soldier momentarily broken.

As the world turned grey around her, she heard a bang and saw Jackie crumple to the ground.

A moment later, she was in the painfully white transport room of the Judoon ship, the arm of a tall, rhino-headed soldier reached out to steady her.

"MaHo, Captain AoRoHo," she said in gratitude. "My mum?"

Her shook his large head sombrely and spoke in unaccented English. "We were too late."


	6. The Lam

Tony's keening wail of despair shattered the air of the transporter room. Rose's arms came around his shoulders as his legs buckled beneath him. She sank to her knees with him in her arms, tears pooling in her eyes and running down her cheeks.

She rocked Tony back and forth until her muscles ached. Her choked sobs joined his shuddering wails. It felt as if the air was gone from the room. Her lungs burned, her muscles ached from the cold floor. The grief radiating off the whimpering child in her arms in waves left her feeling weak.

After what may have been minutes or hours, the fresh, raw grief gave way to aching emptiness. A Judoon officer directed them to a small set of quarters. Rose dropped into one of the beds and Tony curled into her side as he had done when he was much smaller.

"What happened, Rose?" he asked in a very small voice. For all his brilliance, Rose found it easy to forget how very young he was.

She weighed how much to tell him, and settled on a heavily redacted version of the truth. "There was a coup at Torchwood – you know what I mean by that?"

"Yeah. Violent takeover." Tony's education in history had been thorough, she could tell.

Rose nodded. "We knew somethin' big was coming. Even after the Preachers took over, some of the old Torchwood was still there and Pete… Pete tried so hard to fix it." She took a deep breath and continued. "But there was too much going on. President herself was involved; they'd got to her. Convinced her that Pete was hiding dangerous secrets. We thought they were going to make a move tomorrow, at the party."

"But they knew you knew," Tony said quietly, having connected the dots easily enough.

"Yeah, seems they did."

They lapsed into an uneasy silence. Tony rested his head on Rose's arm as they lay curled together on the uncomfortable Judoon mattress.

He seemed to digest this information, and she could see the wheels turning in his head as he filed it away. "What happened to Dad?"

She brushed his blonde hair away from his forehead. "I don't know. My contact told me he was killed, that's all."

"And mum?"

"Died protecting us both, brave as can be."

His face fell and the tears started anew. "What are we gon' do now, Rose?"

"We're going to go where we can be safe. I promise you, Tony, we're going to be okay."

Tony's small frame shook with sobs. She pressed a kiss to the top of his head and stroked his hair, muttering what words of comfort she could until she felt his sobs give way to sniffles and then the gentle, deep breaths of sleep.

* * *

Rose stepped out of the adjoining washroom, wet hair wrapped in a towel, turban-style. She grabbed her blue bag from the desk and sat down on her bed.

"Best you have a shower, Tony. Don't know how long it will be before we have our own washroom again." She looked over at the boy who lay immobile, eyes fixed on the white wall. He didn't acknowledge her words. They'd been with the Judoon nearly a week now, and Tony had spoken very little. He had been nearly immobile in his grief, rising only to go to the loo and change his clothing before bed, and Rose was very worried.

She reached into her rucksack and drew out a fluffy towel and a change of clothes in Tony's size. "Come on, Trouble," she urged fondly, using the nickname John had given him. She had to admit, it was fitting.

"Don't call me that," Tony muttered. It was the first Rose had heard out of him all day.

"Got you talking."

"Don't want to talk. I want to go home."

She rose and moved to the other thin bed, placing her hand gently on his arm. "I'm sorry, Tony, but we can't. We can't go back."

"Why?" His voice broke on the word and he sounded far younger than his nine years.

"It's not safe," she said simply. "Torchwood has their fingers out well past Earth, so we're going away, where they can't find us. Best you get your shower now, we'll be at the port in a few hours."

She could see that Tony hesitated with whether to ask any further questions. He sighed and moved to sit up. Rose grabbed the towel off the end of the bed and handed it to him. "Go on, then."

When Tony returned from the washroom fifteen minutes later, dressed in the clothing Rose had purchased for him in the event of a need for a sudden escape, Rose was seated in the middle of her bed, her ever-present blue bag placed in front of her. She was carefully removing items from the rucksack, folding them, and placing them in piles around her

"How does it all fit?" Tony asked. He pulled on his blue jumper while crossing the small room to where Rose sat.

She folded the jacket in her hands and placed it carefully beside her. "Do you remember working on John's experiments on the coral with him?" Tony nodded. "This is what happened with it. She stopped growing, but he was able to convince her to take a useful shape."

"So it's bigger on the inside?" his eyes were wide. He'd been raised on tales of space and time travel, stories of the Doctor and Rose Tyler in the TARDIS.

Rose waved him over to look. "Yep. This is the TARDIS. Well, sort of." The boy took the dark blue rucksack from Rose's hands and looked inside. Through the opening of the bag he could see what seemed to be shelves. He poked his head through, and it was as though he were looking into a small room from a hole in the ceiling. There was clothing everywhere, boxes of foodstuffs were strewn across the floor, interspersed with books.

"It's a mess in there," Tony said as he pulled his head out.

"Yeah, well, Judoon transport is a bit rough on the stability field."

"Can I travel in there? Obviously you wouldn't fit through the opening…"

"Oi!" Tony laughed, but the sound was short and the mirth didn't reach his eyes. "You might be able to, but I don't know yet. John only got the bag working a couple of months before he died. Haven't much tested it yet. Packed loads of food and clothes, though."

Tony hefted the bag in his hand and Rose could see the gears turning in his head. "So the inside is another dimension, right? Is that why it feels like it's empty?"

"Got it in one. Only the bag is in this dimension, subject to our gravity. The contents aren't. Took me forever to understand that."

"I remember John telling me something about it," Tony said. A look of sadness passed over his features and Rose could tell he was remembering all they had lost. After a moment, he reached into the bag and withdrew a sleeve of chocolate biscuits. "At least you packed well."

Rose decided against chiding him for his less than nutritious selection and took a biscuit herself. "So, the Judoon will be dropping us off at Adaraxidoredanillae, and I can get us passage there to where we need to go."

"Can you say that again?"

"Adaraxidoredanillae. Had a meeting with the general manager couple years ago. Zhe owes me a favour."

"Zhe?"

"Non-binary gender pronoun."

"Ah," said the nine-year-old, as if it came as no surprise to him. "Where are we going from there?"

Rose looked out the small porthole in their cabin and pointed into the black. "That way."

* * *

The port of Adaraxidoredanillae, a small tropical moon orbiting a gas giant in the Raxis cluster, was one of the most beautiful sights Rose had seen on her travels.

Rose and John had negotiated a trade agreement with the port authority through U.N.I.T. They'd wanted to harvest selenium from Earth, one of few planets within an economically feasible travel distance where it occurred in any significant quantity. Unfortunately, their mining methods would have left huge swaths of the planet uninhabitable. It had taken every bit of their diplomatic skill, and calling in a number of favours, but in the end they had arranged a contract between a number of mining companies and the Adaraxidoredanillaen management that had left the general manager of the port quite wealthy.

They'd been treated to a week at one of the hotels on the western continent, one of the few off-world trips Rose and the Doctor had been able to take, owing to their immature TARDIS. They had, of course, jumped at the chance when it was offered.

Ships from all over the galactic neighbourhood – the _Mutter's Spiral_ , as John had called it – docked here, exchanging goods, making deals, using it as a layby on longer journeys. The entire eastern continent was dedicated to shipping, but the western continent was an oasis.

Trees in every colour of the rainbow dotted pastoral landscapes where azure grasses danced in the soft winds. Waves lapped on pale lavender shores and oceans as blue as the Caribbean stretched towards distant horizons where the violent swirling of the gas giant below hung in the sky. The view from their hotel room had taken Rose's breath away.

She saw Tony's eyes go wide as the Judoon ship entered low orbit, awaiting clearance to land, and the eastern continent came into view. Captain AoRoHo had left the pair of humans mostly alone since picking them up, something for which Rose was immensely thankful. While the Captain, with whom she'd dealt a number of times whilst transferring non-human prisoners who had used Earth as a hideout, was a gentleman of the sort rarely seen amongst Judoon, she knew the crew would likely be a little harder for Tony to handle.

The klaxon alerting them to the initiation of the landing procedure sounded. She pulled her rucksack over her shoulders and reached down for Tony's hand.

"Ready to go?"

"Yeah. M'starving, though, can we get something to eat?"

She smiled at the small boy. "Just you wait. They have this food, it's like ice cream, but it's not. Made from some sort of vegetable, kind of like an aubergine. Tastes like chocolate."

Rose led Tony to the docking chamber, and after a quick goodbye to the Captain, they stepped off the ship into the vibrant terminal.

The building was not so much built as grown around a frame. The walls were deep red, living wood. Here and there, branches grew inward instead of outward, boughs of blue and green foliage shading the walkway where sunlight filtered in.

"This is brilliant!" Tony shouted. A few people turned to look at them, and shook their heads in amused disapproval at the child's outburst.

"Isn't it? Said the same thing when I was here last. Now, we've got to go register. C'mon!" She tugged him along down the corridor and he followed along carefully. His head craned this way and that, eyes roving all over the place. She could see the questions forming in his mind and smiled, glad that he was refraining from the constant stream of inquiry he was prone to.

They entered the short queue to the customs counter where they would register their arrival. "Tony, keep quiet here, okay?" The boy nodded. Rose placed a hand on his shoulder and steered him along beside her.

"Name, planet of origin," drawled the desk worker when Rose and Tony reached the front of the queue. The ginger woman had skin that was just a bit too pink to be human. It was almost as if she had a fuchsia sunburn. Rose thought it looked rather lovely with her dark red hair, but the bored expression she wore certainly made her look less friendly.

"Rose Marion Tyler, Earth, er, Sol 3. Antony Iain Tyler, Sol 3."

"Humans?" she looked above her terminal screen with the most vibrant green eyes Rose had ever seen. Tony was staring back at her, his own eyes wide. "Don't get many of you."

"Yes, well, I've been here before. Guest of Ka'at M!qin." The woman's eyes returned to the monitor and she nodded.

"Anything to declare?"

"Only personal effects; clothes, books, food, small items for trade."

The customs worker tapper her screen and her eyes dropped to the next question. "Are you carrying in excess of fifty thousand standard credits?"

"Don't I wish," Rose muttered.

"Any live foodstuffs or companion organisms?"

"None."

"What is your business on Adaraxidoredanillae?" She looked up, her eyes boring into Rose's.

"Couple days' layover before we leave for the A'ni'daren systems."

"Please provide proof of sufficient credit for your length of stay." Rose waved her right hand over a flat reader. It beeped as the black ring worn on her thumb passed over it.

The woman twisted to her side and grabbed two small cards from what looked to be a printer. She wrote something on them and attached a sticker to the corner of each. "These are your transit cards. You have been approved for four days' stay and if you require any additional time, please re-register. If you require any tourist information, it can be found at the desk indicated on the map at the end of the corridor. Is there anything else?"

"Nope, s'it. Thanks!"

Rose tugged Tony along behind her. It only took a few seconds for the questions to begin. She knew they had a way to walk, so decided it was best to at least answer some of the questions bubbling up from within him.

"What species was she?"

"A'ni'daren. Pretty common in port cities; they're a nomadic people since their homeworld burnt up."

"What happened to it?"

"Sun went supernova. Don't worry, they evacuated long before. Have a whole bunch of other planets, too, but their people are all over this galaxy. Population here is about half A'ni'daren, half M!" Rose still had difficulty pronouncing the full glottal stop, telepathic translation from the juvenile TARDIS notwithstanding.

"How can I understand what everyone is saying? You can't tell me English is spoken off Earth." Tony was squinting at a poster on the wall. Rose could tell he was watching the symbols morph into recognizable letters.

She smiled as his eyes went wide in recognition. "That's the TARDIS. She's still pretty immature, not ready to travel, but she's telepathic enough to translate. Gets in your head and translates for you. Used to be that John had to be around for it to work, but obviously he managed to fix that. Should work so long as we're close to her."

"So your rucksack is getting in my brain?"

"Yup," she said, popping the 'p' and flashing him a wide grin. "Didn't like it when it first happened to me. Can you feel that little hum? Like someone's singing far off and you can barely hear it?"

Tony closed his bright blue eyes and Rose could tell he was listening for it. A moment later, he looked up at her in surprise. "That's the TARDIS," Rose told him. "She'll keep connected to you, and to me. Won't be a rucksack forever, anyway. Once we're settled, we'll get her growing again."

"What's in the A'ni'daren systems? Why are we going there?"

"Tell you later, okay? Let's get some food and I need to ring Ka'at so we can get a hotel."

* * *

Tony thoroughly enjoyed the vegetable-based ice cream-like cold treat. Rose couldn't refuse him a second helping, considering it was a vegetable and she'd managed to get him to eat very little over the previous week. It seemed his appetite was returning, and she was pleased to see it. She could tell he'd lost some weight in his grief, and she didn't wish to see him weaken.

They wandered the shops on the mezzanine of the main terminal building they were in. Rose called Ka'at, who was only too pleased to put them up in zir own manor's guest quarters.

Tony had required a firm talking to that evening, and he had gone to bed, upset, before Rose had a chance to speak with him. He had gawked when the tall, willowy Ka'at met them. Looking rather like humanity's stereotype of aliens, Ka'at's long, lean form, grey skin, and large, hairless skull had absolutely astounded the child. Rose had apologized profusely for his rudeness to the very proud M!si manager who had agreed to help them.

Rose learned, the next day, that there was no transport leaving for any of the major A'ni'daren outposts any time in the next week which would accept passengers.

"You've got to be kidding me, Ka'at," she moaned, looking over the translucent sheet which held the planned departures for the week. "Since when are there no ships to that system? Honestly."

"There are ships, Rose Tyler. They just will not accept human passengers." Ka'at's wide, black eyes blinked. It was a bit unnerving whenever Rose saw the nictating membranes close over those shining eyes. It was an utterly reptilian gesture and reminded Rose of a few species she had encountered that had been less than friendly.

"What's anyone got against humans?"

"Your species is very primitive, Rose Tyler. There are many cultures which do not consider you sentient."

Rose dropped the schedule on the table and dropped into her chair. "Thanks. That helps."


	7. KB4

The QQS Ariades starliner glided silently through the void of space, bits of planetary jetsam colliding with her hull here and there, silent fireworks extinguished on her black, radioceramic coated plates. A ship of gentle curves and sweeping lines, Ariades slipped through galaxies like an interstellar wave; all gentle grace and sparkling peaks. The flagship of the Quorosi Alliance's world-state owned cruiselines, she was a ship for the rich and powerful, a shining example of luxury and excess. When Rose had first walked through the obsidian doors off the loading dock at Quoro, she was reminded of Pete's mansion.

Great pillars lined the main hall, drawing guests to enormous, curved staircases carved from something Rose could only describe as marbled coral. It was a stone the likes of which she had never encountered, soft cream with veins of gold and peach. Now in the dark, it glowed with a faint bioluminescense, a remainder of the living organism it had been.

The main hall of the ship was silent now, the rumble and fuss of the evening meal having drawn to a close. The lights had come down as the assembled guests turned their eyes to the staircases. From the back of the room, soft music began to play. So like violins to Rose's ear, but with an accent to their rich voices which betrayed that they were not of Earth. But still, the effect was the same.

Her own voice joined them as a spotlight from above blinked on, blinding her for a moment. The accents on her form-hugging, floor-length black gown sparkled in the light, bringing to mind the stars and galaxies that twinkled through the portholes.

Rose raised the back of her hand to the side of her face, the muscle memory of her well-practiced choreography taking over as she raised her voice in song, carrying her rich tone through the room. Her audience sat, enraptured by the woman who was alien to them. All pink and yellow. She sang of loss and heartbreak. Of dancing across the stars. The music reached triumphant crescendos and fell in cascading loss to near silence.

An hour of lyrical storytelling passed in moments for them. As she drew her final song, one of hope in the darkest times, to a close, the audience rose as one in cheers.

Rose bowed to the roomful of Quorosi and thanked them, a smile across her face. Thankful that she'd learned to hold her tears at bay.

* * *

Rose dropped onto the thin mattress of her bunk, toeing off her designer _Marc Max_ stilettos as she did. She pulled her feet up beside her, rubbing her throbbing heels. Six weeks of this and she was still not used to moving about in impractical but, she had to admit, decidedly gorgeous shoes. Years of work as an alien liaison had accustomed her feet and calves to running about in trainers, not the shiny, blood red, five-inch high monstrosities she'd worn all evening.

For all the money the company put into her wardrobe, Rose was continually disappointed by the small cabin she and Tony had been assigned. Barely tall enough for her to stand – all five feet and four inches of her – with two small bunks, a small desk with many drawers, and a curtain partitioning off the closet. They shared a washroom with the rest of the entertainment staff.

Housing and food for herself and Tony were part of her remuneration. She'd joined the cruiseline several weeks prior, desperate for work when she and Tony had finally found their way to Marax 7, a port city on an A'ni'daren moon. They had been running for over a month, hopping from place to place on merchant ships and the occasional military transport. The credits Rose had been given by Captain AoRoHo had been exhausted by the time the two had reached the spaceport and Rose was starting to worry how much longer the supplies in her rucksack would hold out if she could not find some way to generate an income to support herself and Tony.

She'd been wandering the customs building, looking for any human-friendly species she might be able to negotiate transport with, when she'd seen an advert for a singer.

The Quorosi Cruiselines entertainment manager had loved her. She'd sung her best interpretation of _Blackbird_ by The Beatles, and had brought the man to tears. She'd been offered the job on the spot, the manager telling her that the ship's headliner had met with a messy end after running up debts to the wrong people.

By day's end, Rose had found her and Tony ensconced in a small room on the tiny QQS Kelios, where they had lived until just last week. Rose's performance had generated some interest and the company felt she belonged on a more prestigious ship.

Leaving behind their friends on the Kelios had been hard for her and Tony. They'd formed a close bond with some of the other non-Quorosi crewmembers. While the Quorosi had been welcoming and kind, as a people they viewed aliens largely as sources of entertainment, not fit for socializing with. There were two other humans on the Kelios, Marius and Marie, a brother and sister who had been abducted as children and raised as attractions by the galactic equivalent of a sideshow. They'd escaped the sideshow, but never felt like returning to Earth and so had chosen to travel the stars, a choice Rose completely understood.

Rose and Marie had developed an almost sisterly bond in the short three weeks they'd spent on the Kelios, and she felt the loss acutely now that the diminutive brunette was no longer around. Each night, she and Marie would sneak on to one of the observation decks to view the stars through the invisible shielding. It reminded Rose of sitting at the doors of the TARDIS, where the universe ran on forever in every direction. Marie would wax poetic about the places she and her brother had visited. Rose had urged her to write her stories down. The younger woman had been a captivating storyteller and Rose missed her stories.

Marius had usually watched Tony while Rose performed, and had served as a sort of father figure to the boy. As a member of the cooking staff, he finished work just before Rose performed and he would help Tony work through whatever academic work Rose had set him. They may not be able to return home, but Rose would not let her charge's education suffer. Particularly as the boy had every sign of being a proper genius. Rose had him doing work from books she'd picked up on their travels which were more complex than the physics texts she'd studied during her degree.

This evening, Tony was playing with one of the A'ni'daren boys from the cabin across from theirs. The child's mother played an instrument in the band whose name Rose couldn't pronounce. The boys would spend their evenings wandering around the crew areas of the ship and generally keeping out from underfoot. Tony was quick to befriend other children and Rose was glad for it. No matter where they went, the boy never seemed lonely. It was a pleasant change.

Rose felt like returning to her once nightly ritual of viewing the stars so, after removing and hanging up the shimmering gown that was worth far more than a year of her pay, she changed quickly into denims and a soft jumper she'd brought from home. Pulling trainers onto her aching feet, she left the small cabin and made her way to the observation deck that this ship provided for crewmembers. She didn't have to sneak around on this ship, and for that she was pleased.

Only having a vague idea of the route this ship took through the stars, she touched the small infopad on the side wall of the bubble-like observation deck and selected the option for an audio guide. The voice of the tours director – a computer program – surrounded her.

"….as you can see to the starboard side. In the port observatory, patrons will note a binary star system within a large constellation of seventeen stars. The planets of the binary system are the next stop on our itinerary and will involve the option of an off-ship excursion, tickets for which may be purchased at the Patron Experience counter. The uninhabited binary system, designated I7/echo/Q is characterized by seven planets. Three planets orbit the yellow star, one orbits the cooler red star, and two are in joint orbit around both. Held in perfect equilibrium between the gravitational fields of the two stars is a planet which has been a matter of significant curiosity to cosmologists – KB4, so designated because of the traditional A'ni'daren name for this this constellation, Kasterborous…"

The voice droned on, but Rose had stopped listening to the computer. Her eyes sought out the bright, two-starred system that seemed almost close enough to touch. She could not make out the planets in orbit and knew they must be positioned such that the light of their stars obscured any possibility of spotting the smaller planets. She imagined she could see, in the wide expanse of blackness between the stars, a still planet. Not subject to the whims of stars but firm in its own place in the universe. She squinted, trying to see it, but knew it was still too far for her human eyes to resolve it.

It felt like she hadn't breathed since she'd heard the computer say the system's name. _It couldn't be…_ The planet had been ripped out of time and space and it shouldn't exist anywhere.

John had left her a book of notes, telling her he thought the planet still existed in this reality, though he'd never explained how it could. She had sought out the A'ni'daren systems after their escape from Earth, as he'd said she should, to see if he was right, but no one knew of an inhabited world that met her description. Over the last weeks, Rose's hope that John's belief in what he had found would bear out had faded, and she had felt despair building within her at the thought that all he had worked on in his final years would come to nought.

As the infopad brought up photos of the planets they would see the following day, her attention was drawn to the screen and she paused it on an image of one planet. A planet which could exist only if John was _right_ , and she felt ashamed she had been so quick to lose faith in John's findings.

An orange sky dotted with long clouds painted like streaks of flame arched over fields of dark red grass. Mountains rose up from scarlet plains, reaching towards the suns in the sky, rising above silver-leafed trees which grew, gnarled and ancient-looking, on crests of gently sloping foothills. Rose's breath caught in her throat – it looked exactly like he had described. Exactly like the echo of a memory of _home_ she'd retained from when she'd looked into the heart of the TARDIS.

The Shining World of the Seven Systems.

It felt almost blasphemous to utter the word herself. To name this world which should not exist, and that she had dared not hope to find. But she looked from the image at her fingertips, beneath the cool class of the observatory infopad, to the dark space between two suns she had heard tell of years before.

She imagined she could see the burnt orange globe nestled between its life-giving stars, and she breathed its name into the cosmos. " _Gallifrey._ "

* * *

It took Rose no time to get permission to accompany the patrons on the day excursion to Gallifrey – KB4, Rose corrected herself. It was uninhabited, which explained why no one she had asked was familiar with it, and she learned it had never been home to any society in this reality. There was a contingent of researchers who had been sent to tend some measurement equipment on the planet's surface. Rose's evening of reading informed her that KB4 was a Class 5 uninhabited planet with liquid water, temperate climate, minimal background radiation, and a nitrogen and oxygen based atmosphere. It was suitable for human and Quorosi life and, unlike the other six planets in the system, required no additional equipment to visit and so had been chosen by the cruiseline as the most profitable of the planets to host an excursion.

The following night was Rose's first night off since joining the entertainment crew of the Ariades and, as a headline singer, she was granted privileges many other crewmembers were not. Joining the customers on off-ship visits was a rare treat, but still occasionally permitted for her.

She walked quietly back to her room, her eyes cast down to the floor. She belched in greeting to the Araxi custodian she passed – one of many cultural quirks that came second-hand to her after her years liaising with various species on behalf of Earth – and pushed open the heavy door to her and Tony's cabin.

He had returned for the evening and was clean and dressed in his pajamas. The blonde boy sat in his bunk, the higher of the two, reading a paper on multidimensional physics which Rose had only barely been able to get through herself, despite having been awarded a doctorate in the discipline last summer.

"Alright Tony?" she asked by way of greeting, toeing off her trainers by the door. She walked over to his bunk and folded her forearms on the edge by his shoulder. She leaned over and gave him a brief kiss on his freckle-smattered cheek. The boy smiled without taking his eyes off the document full of complex formulae.

"Yeah. Mxtis and I just got back from the galley. Already took care of supper," he nodded to the small desk where a covered plate sat. "He told me he and his brother and mum are leaving the next time we make port." He looked at Rose at the last, his young eyes very sad. It wasn't the first time he'd had a friend leave since they'd started this nomadic life. She knew they needed somewhere stable before long.

She looked at him sadly and ran her fingers through his flaxen hair. "'M sorry, Tony. I know it's hard. For what it's worth, I don't think we'll be hanging 'round here much longer ourselves."

He lifted an eyebrow, "Oh?"

She hesitated a moment, unsure what to tell him, but decided on the truth. "We're going to a planet. The Doctor's planet – well, this universe's version of it, I think – tomorrow. There's no Time Lords here as far as I can tell, but according to John, this planet should be the perfect place to grow the TARDIS."

John and Rose had told Tony all about their years travelling together, all the dangers they'd faced and the daring escapes they had made, and the boy agreed with Rose's belief that the safest place they could be was _not here,_ and, preferably, _not here_ with their own TARDIS to live in _._ They'd been tracked down twice already and it seemed no matter how far they went, their enemies would find them. An uninhabited planet was probably their safest prospect for the time being.

Tony seemed to think about it for a moment, head cocked to the side. Rose watched as his eyes darted back and forth, apparently reading something in his mind. He did that a lot, and she knew it was his mental whiteboard – a trick of thinking he used to work through more complex matters. After a moment, he shrugged to himself, re-focused his vision and turned to Rose. "Okay, so what's the plan?"


	8. By the Shores of the Coral Sea

It had proven remarkably easy to steal – Rose preferred the term _borrow_ but knew it was unlikely they'd ever give it back – a 20-seater escape shuttle. It was a small, interplanetary hopper, but it came prepared with a large survival kit. Materials for shelter, communications, food, medicines. Many of the medicines weren't compatible with human biology, but she knew a few that were, though she hoped they wouldn't ever be necessary. The starliner carried more than enough escape shuttles for the entirety of her crew and passengers, and Rose knew no one would be endangered by her making off with one of them.

In the dark of the night, with the ship light's turned low to maintain circadian rhythms, she and Tony had made a plan to leave the ship for good the following day. The escape shuttle was faster than the Ariades and Rose could pilot it easily enough. They'd worked out a plan and packed their precious TARDIS sack with everything they owned. It may not be a proper TARDIS, but it was sufficient to store far more than it should. John had marvelled at the young coral cutting's desire to please them, and despaired at its inability to grow more in Earth's temporal environment. Even four years on the rift in Cardiff hadn't been sufficient to help it grow more than a foot and a half.

Tony slept above Rose in his bunk, putting away what energy he could for what would be a long day ahead. Rose listened to his soft, regular breathing and realized how very much she missed hearing John's gentle snoring in the night. She'd avoided thinking about John Lord as much as possible since she and Tony had made their way off Earth. Yet another name on her list of loss. She couldn't allow herself to wallow and she did as best she could to avoid thinking about any of them.

She remembered John's last day, when he had seemed lucid for a moment. His emaciated face made his warm eyes stand out all the more as he breathed his last, her name on his lips. Rose shook the image out of her mind. She could not allow herself to fall to pieces right now. Thoughts of her mother's death intruded and she pushed them aside with an almost violent mental shove. She still was not ready to put those memories to rest. Not until they were safe would she give herself time to mourn.

Her mum would have hated what she was planning to do. She'd have fought Rose on it every step of the way, but Rose would have won, because for all her fortitude, Jackie Tyler had been unable to change her daughter's mind since she was sixteen years old.

Rose knew the plan was a reach and she'd been surprised that Tony – precocious as he was – had been so quick to agree to it. She'd given herself a time limit to make things work. Six months. She had six months to take the books of John's notes and make them reality. If her plan bore no fruit, she and Tony would find some quiet corner of some pre-contact civilization and integrate themselves. She knew they would stand out, but she hoped they could integrate. Rose hated the idea of Tony having to live a life on the run, the life they could be stuck with if this didn't work.

Unable to sleep, she rested her head against the grey-painted wall. It wasn't long until the day cycle began and they would make for KB4 with the travellers after breakfast. She took a deep breath and let it out as a sigh, her thoughts chasing themselves in circles through her mind.

Tony whimpered quietly as he had done nearly every night since they had left Earth. Rose stood from her bunk and reached a hand over to run her fingers gently through the young boy's hair. Softly, she sang a traditional Welsh lullaby she had learned in Cardiff, and as she did, he settled back into peaceful slumber.

"… _.Breichiau mam sy'n dynn amdanat, Cariad mam sy dan fy mron…"_

* * *

Their morning meal of various textures and colours of pastes eaten with hard, sweet crackers – Quorosi delicacies that Rose had taken a bit of a liking to – was over before Rose even realized it had begun. Tony had mumbled an excuse to his friends, apologizing for being unable to play with them that day as he would be accompanying Rose on the excursion. Despite his actual excitement at the prospect of seeing the planet in person, he gave no hint of it to the other boys, who did not have any option of off-ship trips.

Throwing her blue, battered-appearing bigger-on-the-inside rucksack over a shoulder, Rose reached for Tony's hand. They set off together towards the departure lounge, where a shuttle would take them to the surface.

"Can you see it out the window, Rose?" the boy asked.

She shook her head. "We're in orbit and the angle's all wrong. Just wait." Rose understood the enthusiasm – she herself was very excited to see this planet. She looked around the two dozen or so passengers who collected around them as a group. Off-ship excursions hadn't been terribly popular on the Kelios either. The tour director was standing up ahead, clad in her neatly pressed, light-blue uniform. She wore a large smile as the group formed about her and she raised her hand to wave stragglers to her.

"Good morning, everyone. Please ensure you're in the right place. This excursion is to the surface of KB4 at the edge of the Coral Sea. There is a second group leaving this afternoon for the hot springs in the Glass Mountains." At this, half the group left and the remainder clustered closer to the director. "We will be leaving by landing shuttle from Bay 7 in just a few minutes. Please follow me, and please ensure your safety badge is active and charged by pressing the green button on the front." She demonstrated using her own, and the members of the excursion party followed suit. "This way, please."

Rose and Tony joined the queue and within minutes were buckled into the shuttle's rather luxuriously appointed passenger compartment. While stowing the backpack beneath the seat ahead of her, Rose could feel a faint hum in the fabric. She made a mental note of it, supposing the very young TARDIS was responding to their proximity to the planet. The shuttle rumbled faintly along and Rose held Tony's hand tightly as they broke atmosphere – a bumpy ride in every vessel she had ever travelled on. She knew Tony had a hard time with any sort of turbulence after their rough ride off Adaraxidoredanillae in the cargo hold of a livestock ship. It had been the only transport Rose had been able to find which would take them to any of the A'ni'daren planets.

It took a half hour for the shuttle to land, and the passengers poured out of the small vessel onto white sand. As her eyes adjusted to the bright ambient light, Rose let out an audible gasp.

One of the suns was rising above the horizon far to what she supposed would be the East. Red and brilliant, it capped the waves with tips of fire as they rolled toward the beach. The white sand squeaked softly below her feet as she took a few cautious steps ahead. To the west were stands of what appeared at first to be pale rock. Arching and branching they seemed almost to move in the morning mist which poured out from between them.

Kissed by the rising sun, the thin mist swirled around the travellers, painting the air a pale rose, like sweet French wine Rose had once enjoyed. She took a deep breath and felt her lungs – after months aboard starliners, breathing recycled air – take in the humid air. It felt like breathing for the very first time.

There was the faintest scent of spice and salt on the air, and something sweet that Rose could not place. She looked over at Tony and saw that he was running his hands reverently down the coral rock-like formations, a look of awe on his face. She smiled and turned her sight back to the sea which seemed to stretch forever, touching the red sun and orange sky.

The waves sounded different here. Their sound was deeper, more soothing as they lapped upon the shore. It felt blasphemous to speak, wrapped as they were in the ethereal beauty of this alien beach.

She could feel something in the back of her mind, a welcoming presence. The sand beneath her feet and the mist that wet her skin resonated with it. She closed her eyes and saw only golden light in her mind's eye as she let the breath of the planet's awareness flow through her.

She walked towards the water's edge and felt tears form in her eyes. It was the most beautiful place she had ever been. In all her travels, in years of exploring the universe, she had never set foot on a world that sang its welcome in her very soul.

Finally, she understood the look that came over John's face whenever he described his lost home. This planet he had mourned so deeply was beyond words. She felt in her own heart the soul of this world and in that moment understood more than she ever had before what it was for him to lose Gallifrey. What a jewel for her home universe to have lost, this Eden, this Utopia.

Tony stepped up beside her and leaned into her side. She wrapped her arm about his slight shoulders and they gazed out over the sea together, taking in the rise of the red sun.

"So what do you think, Tones?" she asked him

He shot an unamused look up at her for the nickname – he was particular about being addressed only as Tony or Antony – and drew in a breath, closing his eyes. "It feels… like home. Even though it's not. I don't know how to describe it, but I like it here."

"Me too. Think we'll be alright here for a while?"

His face broke in a radiant smile. "Yep!" He broke off from her side and ran for the water, splashing in the waves at the edge of the beach, the definition of childhood abandon.

The group spent a few hours photographing and exploring the varying habitats around the Gallifreyan – Rose could no longer think of the planet as anything else – beach. They'd tromped through the coral forest and Rose had felt that the bag on her back seemed to resonate with the breeze winding through the tree-like structures. It radiated what she could only describe as contentment as they wandered in the shade.

They'd found themselves in a copse of silver-leafed trees which swayed to and fro with the increasing wind. It had rained briefly as the group had settled to dine on prepared lunches. In the distance, an immense rock formation lined the horizon, straight lines of black and grey rock breaking the long line of the red-grass plains ahead of them. It reminded rose of Uluru, only it seemed to go on forever.

During the excursion, the tour director had kept up a running narrative of what was known about the planet. Held in a single relative position by the gravity of its two distant suns, the planet was far out of the habitable zone of either. It was only because of the additive influence of both stars' energies that this planet had plant life at all. There was no animal or insect life at all, though there was a complex world of microorganisms which were symbiotic with the plant life.

The coral forest, they were told, was similar to the animal-created aquatic coral found on other planets, only this was the result of calcium-fixing lichens instead of cnidarians. It took millions of years, they were told, for the coral trees to grow. The unique gravity of the planet, which was slightly higher than most class 5 planets, was why their excursion to the planet was limited to a half day as it would exhaust most species fairly easily. At this, Rose had had to stifle a laugh.

After her years with the Doctor and the better part of a decade working at Torchwood then U.N.I.T., she was in peak physical form. She felt she could run for days, and barely noted the slight increase in her perceived weight in the increased gravity. Tony seemed to be tiring, but she knew he'd adapt quickly.

The scientists in their party set off across the faintly spicy-smelling red grass towards a small outcropping of rock, where some sort of measurement equipment was stored. They returned soon after the remainder of the group had finished their midday meal. Rose luxuriated in the warm sun, no hotter than a warm June day in London, and stretched on a soft bed of grass. Tony bounded about with the only other child in the group – a Quorosi girl about his age – climbing burgundy-barked branches and shrieking happily as they dove onto the piles of soft moss that lined the ground between the trees.

The idyll of the morning was broken as the director herded them back to the shuttle. Rose felt a sense of loss as the doors closed behind them and the shuttle took off.

Tony fell into a fitful nap on the trip back, exhaustion from the morning's exertion in higher gravity claiming him. Escaping the planet's gravity took longer than the careful descent and it was an hour before they joined back up with the Ariades in orbit. As the passengers disembarked, Rose hung back with Tony and woke him gently. The tour director left before Rose and Tony had exited the shuttle as they were not paying passengers so did not fall under his purview.

Tony woke quickly and took only a moment to find his bearings. Rose shushed him before he spoke a word and they exited the shuttle quietly. It was the lunch hour for the tour staff and there were almost none in the lounge. Rose took Tony's hand and they made their way, as casually as possible, down the nearby corrido that would take them to the escape shuttles.

They faced no opposition as they sneaked into one of the well-stocked shuttles. Rose's nerves sung with worry as she began the initiation sequence, but no voice came over the comm. No one came running for them. It took only five minutes before they undocked from the ship. The shuttles had been designed with the possibility of passengers piloting them in mind, as emergency situations could be unpredictable, and Rose, never much of a pilot herself, was glad of it. Twenty minutes after their escape, they were hailed, but Rose had planned what to do when the ship attempted to retrieve the shuttle and had already deactivated their remote access. The ship, unwilling to mar the experience of their paying customers, did not break orbit to pursue the small shuttle, but fired off a probe in her direction. Rose understood they were marking the location for the authorities to search.

She had, naturally, thought ahead. Two hours later, the small shuttle alighted on the very small rocky surface of a moon shrouded in dense gas, one of the many moons orbiting KB2. The homing beacon for the shuttle had been launched towards the uninhabitable, dangerously toxic planet below. Whoever might come looking for them would get readings of debris and no lifesigns on KB2 and it would appear they had been pulled in by the high gravity of the gas giant circling the red star of Kasterborous.

At least, this was what Rose had hoped. She knew, from nearly two months travelling on interstellar ships, that desertion by crewmembers was not out of the norm. Crew would pick up and leave when a better opportunity presented. The Quorosi government would probably only look so far as to track their homing beacon as their resources wouldn't allow a prolonged search for a low level criminal. Rose knew she was taking a chance by stealing the shuttle, but it was one she had to take.

She settled the ship into a crevasse and prepared to wait. They would rest here a few days, using the ship's provisions. It held enough rations for twenty adults for a month. Dry, uninteresting rations, but they would do. For herself and Tony, the stored food would be enough for a year.

Then once the risk of discovery was gone, they would set for KB4. For Gallifrey. Their new home.

* * *

 **A/N:**

The bit of lullaby Rose sings is from an actual traditional Welsh lullaby called Suo Gân. I would strongly recommend listening to one of the boys' choir versions of it on Youtube (Kings College or Ambrosian Junior Choir.) It is utterly gorgeous, and while I don't speak much Welsh, I sang my own babies to sleep with it because I love what it means.


	9. Bedtime Stories

"Tony," she called out into the red dusk. "Time to come in!" Her voice echoed across the shifting waves of grass to a small plot of dark, black ground. Tony looked about him at the small seedlings that surrounded him, splashes of green in the red sea of grass.

They'd not known which Gallifreyan plants they could safely eat when they landed here so Rose had taken on a systematic approach to testing the plant life that surrounded the small home they had made out of a cave. While their supplies were sufficient for a year's worth of food, and she didn't intend that they should be there longer than a few months, she felt it best to learn which plants on this planet they could eat safely. Tony had also started a small garden from seed packs he'd found in her old survival kit which had been packed away in their bag, both as a way of keeping occupied and to supplement the inoffensive but largely tasteless Quorosi rations, and the small amount of Earth food that remained in their original supply.

Her TARDIS rucksack contained a number of things John had designed in this universe before he died. While the books of his notes were, entirely for her benefit, actually written in English, the settings on the sonic screwdriver he'd built soon after being dropped off in this universe, flashed across the small display in Gallifreyan. John had taught her some very basic interpretation of his peoples' beautiful written language so that she could identify the most useful settings, but she was still not adept at translating it. She held the sonic reverently in her hands, as she always did, and ran her finger along the side to change its setting.

In the short time they'd had together before he'd gotten sick, John had tinkered a bit, trying to increase the rate of growth of the TARDIS coral, but the urgency of his research increased exponentially after Gwen Davies had informed him that he was dying. He had become obsessed, and spent much of his remaining time shut up in the workshop room in their flat, scrawling book after book of notes. Books that now rested on the edge of her workbench.

Rose had been so angry with John for his withdrawal from her, for robbing her of their remaining time together. Rose furiously wiped tears from her eyes with her thumb, angered that she'd let the memories get to her.

She knew, now, what his aim had been, and was still not sure whether to love him more or be angry with his memory for it. He had sacrificed what little time they had left together to try to find her a way home. She thumbed the spine of the thin blue notebook that held pride of place beside the sonic on her desk. His graduation present to her, which she had forgotten to open in the rush of his stroke and final deterioration. She'd felt it almost blasphemous to open it after his death.

It was not until after they had escaped Earth and left everything else behind that she had finally slipped the shiny blue paper off the small package he'd handed her all those months ago. She'd sat by the porthole of the Judoon ship, reading his words to her and sobbed silently in the night, not wanting to wake Tony. She set the sonic down and reached now for the book, opening it to the first page, her fingers running over the beloved words, letters sharp and jagged from the shaking of his weakened hands, for what must be the hundredth time.

Her eyes skimmed the paper, roving over the pages, taking in the words she knew from heart, the ones that most kept her going this whole long way, only reading snippets of the missive.

 _I love you. Don't forget. Don't ever doubt that. I know things are hard right now, and they'll get harder soon, but never forget that you are my forever…_

 _I think I can send you home. I have spent the last three years working on this and I didn't want to tell you until I was sure, but I don't think I have enough time to be sure, Rose. I don't want my last promise to you to be one I break, because by all that is good and great, you deserve more than that._

 _…if I'm right, and I usually am, the time's not long off that you aren't going to be safe here anymore and more than anything, I want you safe. And you'll be safest back where you belong…_

 _The other me is still out there._

 _…he needs you. I need you. … He is me, I am him, and we need you more than ever._

 _I have done everything I can to make it possible, but I can't take you the rest of the way. You have to do that on your own._

 _Remember, if I believe in anything, I believe in you._

 _I love you._

The entry ended with his name, scrawled shakily in Gallifreyan. She only recognized it because the same symbols were engraved on the ring she never took off. The only time she had ever spoken his name had been as his emaciated body was consumed by flame. She replaced the book in its spot, her hand brushing the cover reverently, for once the tears held at bay.

She reflected, not for the first time, on how lucky they were that she'd had as much warning as she did before they had had to flee Earth. Those few days had allowed her to pack her TARDIS rucksack before she had met up with her parents and Tony in London for what would be the last time.

John had died mere months before she and Tony had left Earth. The political trap which would destroy her parents and her life in Britain was already set, waiting to be sprung, by the time he'd written the journal for her. He had been the first to prove her suspicions about Gina Johns and the president were not unfounded, and he had gathered information through his own channels. Information that had saved her and Tony's lives with the advanced warning she had. He had helped lay the groundwork for their escape from Earth, had been able to give her enough lead time to ensure they had the things that would enable this daft experiment to go ahead. His very last act, reaching back from the grave, was to save her and Tony's lives and give them a future.

Nearly six years ago, when the Doctor had left her and his human-ish duplicate on that accursed beach in Norway, her despair had been drowned under a conflicting flood of hope. That beloved voice in her ear had finally confirmed what she long knew. He gave her his forever. It was supposed to be their forever – decades.

But his unstable biology simply could not hold out. He'd been ravaged by what Gwen Davies could best describe as a cancer. His cells proliferated too quickly, wavering uncertainly between human and Time Lord biology. They could not function normally. His blood was poisoned by the fact of its existence. All of who he was had faded. The life died from his eyes long before his single heart stopped beating.

It had almost killed Rose to see him die, but she had stayed with him. While her work and his illness had aborted their attempts at crafting the relationship they both desired, he had died as the person she loved most in all the worlds, save one.

And he would have loved it here. The sonic in her hand whirred weakly, fusing two components on the table. She glanced out the window, seeing Tony tidying up his makeshift gardening tools, and smiled sadly.

The planet that the Doctor had loved beyond reason was her own home now. She felt closer to him here than she had in the weeks before he died. It was as if the essence of him could be found in the red grass and orange sky. She felt him in the morning breeze and in the heat the suns-warmed stones radiated into the cooler Gallifreyan night.

The stillness of this planet, devoid of any sort of animal life, had been a balm on the souls of the two Tylers. Tony had spent their months after leaving Earth constantly distracting himself. It was only when they settled here that they finally had time to grieve.

While nought remained of her parents, she and Tony had crafted a small memorial to Pete and Jackie. She had carved their names as best she could with the sonic on a large slab of the soft, black stone that made up the walls of the cave they had made into a home. Tony had added a drawing of Jackie and Pete to the memorial, and regularly refreshed the flowers there. Rose could smell the lilac-like blooms from where she sat, their sweet scent wafting in on the light breeze into her workshop.

Rose placed the sonic back on the soft cloth she had folded as a resting place for it, precious as it was to her, and rose from the hard bench to see about supper.

She walked out to the small kitchen they had made, and found Tony peeling open a ration packet. He leaned against the table they'd fashioned from some wood and slate-like stone from nearby. She was yet again taken aback by how much he had grown in their two months here; gone was the baby fat that padded his cheeks and the soft roundness of his arms, they were replaced by angles and wiriness from the hard work on the land. He still spoke with a little boy's voice but Rose couldn't help but wonder how much longer that would last. "So, how's it going? Got the vortex flux stabilizer assembled?"

"You're _nine,_ " Not for the first time, Rose marveled aloud at the boy's precocious nature. "When are you going to learn to stop talking like that?" She took a packet herself from where they were stacked on the table and opened it.

He shrugged. "Never. 'M ten next week," he said by way of clarification. As if that explained his understanding of John's notebooks. "Anyway, I found something at the beach this afternoon. Thought you might like to come see."

She looked up quickly, alarmed. "You haven't been near any of the tourists, have you?" They were the only humanoids residing on the planet, but the ship that had originally brought them here made monthly trips back to this system as part of its normal route. For a brief moment, she worried they had arrived early.

He shook his head, his scruffy hair flopping about at the exaggerated gesture. "No, nothing like that. But you might want to bring the sonic – I think it's something John wrote about. It's just to the north."

His eyes clouded a bit at the mention of the man he'd looked up to. John and Rose had been a large part of young Tony's life and Rose attributed most of his precociousness to the erstwhile Time Lord.

After she had eaten and cleaned up, they walked out into the fading light. Because of the planet's unique position relative to two stars, the day and night cycle was very elongated compared to Earth, with a day length of nearly sixty hours, and nights of only fifteen hours in between. The dusk would last for hours this evening, and she and Tony had plenty of time to explore before the darkness fell.

They set for the beach, about a kilometre from their home. They walked through the coral woods along the way. Rose had learned to hum as they passed, and the pinkish coral structures would hum back. She knew for certain now that this was the natural form of the TARDIS – there was nothing else it could be. In the months they had been here, their own small TARDIS coral had grown.

The lump of coral from her Doctor's TARDIS that had grown in nearly four years on Earth only to the size of a small rucksack was now nearly the size of a police box in her own right, though she had reverted to the natural coral-like state since their arrival on the planet. In the past month, Rose had started feeling a persistent sensation of a presence in the back of her mind. She'd never been particularly psychically inclined, but she'd had a connection with the TARDIS ever since her stint as the Bad Wolf. Not having the constant, warming, almost maternal presence of the timeship in her head had been one of the hardest adjustments when she had been trapped in Pete's World the first time.

The return of the TARDIS' presence in her mind had bled hope through her, though this one felt different. Less maternal and more curious. But it was there and for once, in the near decade she had spent in this universe, she didn't feel as beref as she had. Something, at last, felt a little bit right.

As she walked barefoot across the squeaking, white sand, Tony at her side, she felt a thrum in her heart. A deep beating rhythm that was not audible but she could sense in every fibre of her being. Her bones reverberated with it. "Do you feel that?" Tony asked in a hushed voice. Rose nodded. "It's stronger than it was earlier."

She looked ahead and saw nothing out of the norm on the beach. It was the normal stretch of sand they travelled regularly, edged on one side by a smattering of thick, pale red grass, and on the other by the almost silvery water. But there was definitely _something_. "If you felt something weird, you should've come and gotten me, Tony."

The boy shrugged. "I did come get you. Couple hours later, maybe, but still. I got you."

"You know what I meant."

"Yeah, fine. But still, come on. It's just around here."

They were soon standing beside an outcropping of rock they had both been by any number of times. Rose had come here to work on parts of the TARDIS console she was constructing according to John's notes. Sometimes she felt the need to be alone while she read his carefully written instructions. Occasionally she simply needed time to decipher his horrendous handwriting. The beauty of the Gallifreyan written language did not translate to English penmanship.

Her mind returning to the present, she could sense what Tony was talking about. There had been some shift in the rock formation. Like a cold wind had come up and was blowing through her. There was something about it which nagged at her, some familiarity, but she couldn't place it.

"Something's changed here, you're right." She wrapped her arms about herself, suddenly feeling very cold. "It feels… wrong."

Tony nodded. "It feels like a Dementor." At that, Rose let out a sharp laugh. It was a very apt description of what she felt. Tony had loved the Harry Potter books as much as she had.

"That's about right. I think we should leave it for now, until I've got the console built, yeah? The TARDIS will probably be able to help us figure out what it is."

The young boy agreed and, together, they walked back to the small cave they'd turned into functioning living quarters. Settling on the chair pads they had pulled out of the shuttle and lain on the floor as a sort of makeshift couch and sleeping area, Rose settled down with Tony to tell him a story she'd read in the library of the TARDIS so many years ago. A book of Gallifreyan children's stories – one of the only pieces of literature from the Doctor's home world that the ship would translate for her. She had read the book a number of times, hungry for any knowledge of what life was like on the world he'd so deeply mourned. The words came to her easily, as if burned into her mind those years past and brought to the fore by the endless orange sky above them. Tony curled up against her side and for a moment, Rose could almost forget the previous months of heartache. She stroked the boy's soft hair and looked out at the darkening, burnt orange sky.

 _"In the time of Rassilon and Omega, when the stars burned bright for Gallifrey, there lived a petty king…"_


	10. Ghosts of Christmas Past

The Doctor pushed open the door to the TARDIS and patted his abdomen. Jackson Lake had certainly not been hyperbolizing when he'd described the Christmas feast. It had been a long time since he had been so very stuffed.

He smiled as a memory of the evening drifted to the fore of his mind. Young Frederick imploring him to tell tales of his adventures. For all the boy had been through, he'd certainly come through it shining. It was something the Doctor admired most about these funny little humans. It seemed like they could make it unscathed through anything. After a time, anyway.

He ran a hand over the TARDIS console as the happy glow of the evening's domesticity evaporated.

Jackson Lake had lost his wife and had been so broken that he'd tried to become the Doctor.

The Doctor had lost everyone. Who could he become to escape the pain of his reality?

Jackson still had his son, the glorious little Frederick, to dull his grief.

The Doctor had nothing. No one. His family, dead. His people, dead. His love locked away in another world with another him. His happiness was lost to time.

He started the dematerialization sequence, throwing the TARDIS into the Vortex.

Five minutes. He would allow himself five minutes of watching.

The TARDIS shook and shuddered. He grabbed his mallet and hammered the controls, forcing the controls to obey his command. Forcing them to cross his timeline.

He landed in a dark alleyway. A homeless man looked up at him, startled, as he strode out of the TARDIS. The Doctor nodded to him. "Evening," he greeted casually, as if it were no strange thing to step out of a newly materialized police box in a London alleyway.

"Evenin'," the man rumbled back at him before pulling his coat back over his head and returning to a, if the smell were any indicator, alcohol-induced slumber.

The Doctor stepped out of the alleyway and walked down the road, towards a small café he'd noticed years ago. Glad that, for once, he had a few pound coins in his very deep pockets, he ordered a tea and scone.

He sat at a small table nearest the window. Wouldn't be long now.

He could see the TARDIS parked out in the middle of the courtyard. It was only a moment later that his other self stepped out of it.

The younger Doctor, clad for the very first time in that pinstriped suit, strode confidently towards the block of flats that housed the woman who'd changed his lives.

The Doctor watched as the first gentle flakes of snow – precipitated from the atmosphere by the ash of the Sycorax ship falling toward the Earth – drifted downward, settling on the TARDIS. His mood clouded further at the memory of Harriet Jones' decision to kill fleeing foes.

He drew a book from his pocket and flipped through _Hamlet_ , refreshing now and then his tea with a trip to the counter. Hours passed as he re-read the long-memorized words, allowing the pain etched into history by a grieving Shakespeare to weave through him. He thought back to what was happening in the Tyler flat. Another Christmas feast, with paper crowns and the warmth of a _home_ , a place to belong. Something he had lost so long before. His younger self was experiencing it right now. Domestic. But with Rose there, he could do a bit of domestic.

Before long, he saw himself, followed by Jackie, Mickey, and Rose, approach the TARDIS. He couldn't help his own grin as Rose agreed to travel with his earlier self again. He could see the relief in his younger self's eyes even at a distance.

When she took the extended hand of his counterpart, his own ached in remembrance of the contact. She leaned into the arms of his younger self as they decided where to go. In only minutes, they entered the TARDIS and were gone. The Doctor and Rose Tyler, in the TARDIS, as it should be.

Jackie and Mickey walked back towards their flats, and the darkened streets emptied.

As he walked slowly back towards his own TARDIS, fresh snow crunching under his feet, his thoughts wound back to his final weeks with her.

" _How long are you going to stay with me?" he'd asked on the rocky surface of an unnamed alien world where broad, flying creatures sang a wild hymn as the sun rose over the swirling mountains._

" _Forever," she'd said, flashing him a wide smile. He had grinned in return, reaching out to take her hand. She stepped closer to him and he raised his arm to welcome her against his side. She curled into him with a sigh._

 _The sun warmed the bleak, grey stone of the dreary world vibrated. A single note rose into the air from the ground beneath them and the mountains towering over them. Rose's eyes widened and her mouth dropped open in an O of surprise._

" _So beautiful," she muttered. She closed her eyes to listen to the stones of the planet itself singing._

" _Yes, beautiful," he agreed, his eyes fixed on her serene features._

 _He bent to kiss the top of her head, an affectionate urge overcoming him, but at the last moment she looked up at him and he met her lips unexpectedly. He jumped back, an apology at the tip of his tongue, but Rose stepped forward and pulled him down to her._

It had been their first proper kiss. Just three weeks before she'd been lost to the other universe.

He kicked himself, now, for not fighting harder to find her. If Rose had been able to push through the walls of the universe after that, surely he could have done the same. Too fixed on Time Lord rules about the nature of existence, he supposed.

It had once been possible, he remembered telling Rose, to pop between worlds easily. The stable Schism which had allowed such travel was long gone. It was his own fault, of course, because the Schism had only ever been stabilized on Gallifrey.

Feeling aimless, he directed the TARDIS to take him to the summit of Ben Nevis. If ever there was a place for a sulk, a foggy mountaintop in Scotland would be the spot for it. He stepped out of the TARDIS and groaned to himself. Of course it would be the one day a month that it was sunny in Scotland. Even the weather wouldn't cooperate with his mood. He grumbled, skulked back into his blue box and fetched a cup of tea from the galley anyway. He sat on a grey stone and looked out at the sweeping hills and mountains before him. Green grass and grey stone stretched as far as the eye could see, reaching up towards the bright blue sky.

He let the cold wind whip around him. His hands were warmed only by the cup of Tetley as the Earth turned beneath him.

His mind reached out, to try to find that faint presence. The thread-like connection to his other self. It was rare he could sense anything through it, but he hoped desperately for some sense, some reassurance that she was alive and happy with his metacrisis in the other world. A gossamer thread of consciousness reached back through the walls of reality to him. As far as he could tell, there was happiness.

The Doctor sipped his tea and listened to the howl of wind as it blew across the rocky ground. For all his losses, if Rose was happy, he could continue on, but, he decided, he would travel alone.

"… _I suppose, in the end, they break my heart,"_ he'd told Jackson Lake earlier that day.

Some more than others.

* * *

" _It is returning. It is returning through the dark. And then, Doctor? Oh, but then he will knock four times."_

Carmen's words echoed through his mind as he made his way back to the TARDIS. It had been a thoroughly exciting day, if he did say so himself.

Would have been preferable if it hadn't ended with a pronouncement of his death.

He shook off the darkness that tried to cloud into his mind. Lady Christina had been utterly fantastic and he had enjoyed the day with her, but he was glad to see her go.

She reminded him far too much of Rose.

Not in a superficial way – she was a posh noblewoman with a taste for adrenaline where Rose was sharpened on the whetstone of the estate, although, he supposed, she technically _was_ actually a noblewoman herself – but it was the grit in her personality, the ability to enjoy herself in treacherous situations that cast his mind back to his lost companion. Christina's desire for fairness, and her odd way of showing it and that tendency towards being a little too jeopardy friendly were all familiar traits.

There was absolutely no way Lady Christina would be travelling with him, thanks much. Especially after those _looks_ she'd given him. He'd had enough of that nonsense with Martha, he did not need another companion with a crush on him.

He thought a moment of inviting Malcolm Taylor along for a trip by way of thanks, but disabused himself of that notion as quickly as it had arisen. The man was brilliant, but the Doctor was fairly certain he would be driven utterly mad by the man who seemed to be his biggest fan.

Best not.

Hadn't he, only weeks before, assured himself he'd travel alone from now on?

And if his song were ending soon, a reminder that was being thrown in his face at every turn, well then, he'd keep to himself.

He couldn't stand to see someone else hurt, if they got in the way of whatever it was that was coming for him.


	11. A Keyhole

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" Rose cried happily. Tony startled awake from the deep sleep he'd been in, eyes wide and searching. Rose laughed. "Morning!"

Tony looked up, bleary-eyed, and rubbed a hand over his face, lips smacking. "S'my bir'day?" he mumbled.

"Yep." She grinned broadly. "Antony Iain Tyler, you are now officially ten years old."

The boy sat up fully, rubbing a hand over his face. He looked down at the plate that Rose was holding out to him and grinned. One of their last chocolate biscuits. "You saved it for me?"

"'Course I did. Couldn't quite nip out to the shops for a cake now could I? Best I could do for the best ten year old on the planet."

"I'm the only ten year old on the planet," he said around a mouthful of biscuit.

Rose pushed herself up off the cushions and stretched. She handed Tony a plastic mug of tea off the low table she'd made for the bedroom. He promptly dipped his biscuit in it and, after a precisely calculated period of time so as to reach maximal softness but not quite mushiness, threw the rest of it into his mouth, humming in pleasure at the perfect marriage of tea and chocolate.

"I have a present for you," Rose said. She walked the few steps to her workshop and returned a moment later. She handed Tony a long, thin packaged wrapped in a soft cloth.

He carefully unwrapped the gift, and his eyes went wide. "Is this the one John made me?" he asked quietly. Rose saw the bead of a tear gathering at the corner of one of his eyes.

"It is. He left me some instructions on how to lift the restrictions on it. I only just got it working. It should be an almost fully functioning sonic screwdriver now. I hope, anyway. Can't be sure I did everything – OOF," her sentence was cut off as Tony grabbed her in a tight hug. She ran her hand over his head and dropped a kiss on the crown of his hair. "You can consider it from both of us."

"Thank you," the small boy muttered against her chest. "This is the best birthday present ever."

The former heir of Vitex industries, the son of one of the richest men in Britain, who had once counted his birthday presents by the dozen, cried softly against Rose's chest, grateful for a single gift on a special day.

Her heart swelled in her chest and she rocked him side to side gently. "Shh, it's okay, Tony. No need for tears. Besides, I think someone else has a gift for you too."

He looked up, his eyes red-rimmed already, tear tracks damp down his cheeks. "Someone else?"

Rose grinned broadly and took his hand. "Come on. I felt it earlier and thought you'd like to be the first to see so I haven't been to check myself."

They walked out of the cave and followed the well-worn path to the small copse of trees on top of the hill that contained their home. In the very middle of the trees stood a ten foot tall, broad coral structure. Or it had been coral. Today, the structure looked for all the world like a six foot wide tree trunk with no branches coming off it.

Rose watched as Tony approached and she felt the steady, welcoming hum in the back of her mind. She could tell the boy did as well, given his broad smile as he rested his hand on the rough bark.

At his touch, a crack appeared. It stretched upward, along the dips and waves of the red bark. A second crack joined it, and the rough, rectangular outline of a door became visible in the trunk. Grinning, Tony gave it a soft push and it swung inward.

He stepped in and Rose followed.

"She's _beautiful,"_ he whispered in awe. Rose had to agree. She barely restrained herself from doing a happy dance.

Coral struts rose out of the uneven ground towards a ceiling twenty feet above. The room seemed to stretch for metres in every direction. There was no rhyme or reason to it. The entire interior structure glowed faintly, a vaguely rose ambient light with no apparent source cast no shadows.

Branches of coral reached in every direction, forming places suitable for sitting. The pair navigated their way through the tall columns and eventually found themselves in a small clearing.

"This will be the perfect place to put the console," Rose mused. "It shouldn't take me long to move the pieces I've made here."

Tony ran his hand along one of the horizontal beams and then hopped up. His feet dangled in the air below and he breathed deeply of the slightly cool, moist air that surrounded them. "Can we move in here?" he asked hopefully.

"Don't see why not. She seems ready enough, don't you girl?" The entire room seemed to hum in agreement and both Tylers smiled. "I think that's a yes."

"Well then, you get started," Tony said, grinning.

"Just me?"

"S'my birthday so it's my day off."

Rose shook her head, laughing at the cheeky child. "Fine then, you try to see if there are any other rooms. I'll start packing up the cave."

* * *

All told, it had only taken them – Tony had helped, no matter his joking refusal – a few hours to move their belongings into the newly opened TARDIS.

By the time they had finished, the small clearing in the centre of what would be the console room had grown a mushroom-shaped plinth that Rose knew would be the home of the controls she had spent the last couple of months building.

Tony had located a small corridor with four small rooms off the main room. The two largest would be suitable as bedrooms. Tony had attempted to claim the larger of the two, but Rose had pulled rank and relegated him to the smaller one. The TARDIS had been very accommodating and furnished the smallest of the four side rooms as a loo. The toilet, like everything else in the TARDIS, was formed of the ever-present, slightly pink-orange coral, but it would do. There was a walled off area which seemed as though it were a shower stall.

Rose was _very_ glad they would no longer have to hike the half kilometre to the shuttle for running water and a proper toilet. She and Tony had built a small outhouse, but neither had any desire to use it unless they absolutely had to, so the both of them made the walk to the shuttle often enough.

The room they would use as a galley had no cooking apparatuses, though there was what seemed to be a spot made up as a rudimentary stove, similar to the one Rose had constructed out of stones in the kitchen of their cave.

Rose had decided to take a risk and retrieved the shuttle, landing it just outside the stand of silver-leafed trees where the TARDIS was growing. She and Tony made quick work of finishing stripping it of anything useful.

Med kits and tool sets, extra parts, water packs and boxes of rations found their way into the TARDIS. They were stashed in the many dozens of cubby holes that had grown into the sides of the main rooms. Rose stripped the last few seats of cushions from their getaway vehicle and used them to make up beds for her and Tony on the newly raised platforms in their bedrooms which seemed intended for this purpose.

After a very long day of moving things about, Rose returned the shuttle to the ravine where they'd had it camouflaged for the months they had been here. She pulled the dead branches and grasses back over it and walked away for what she hoped was the last time.

Soon enough, they'd have a much better mode of transport.

She breathed deeply of the spicy air on the walk back to the TARDIS, running her fingers along the tops of the long, red grass she walked through. This planet certainly explained the Doctor's lifelong desire to be ginger; he'd have matched his home world. All oranges and reds, dotted with bits of brown and blue and silver. She smiled at the thought and realized that she was finally, all these months later, able to think about him without the gaping maw of grief threatening to consume her.

It was nearly a year now since he had died. It had been a challenge to keep time in Earth days since their arrival on Gallifrey, with its seventy five hour light and dark cycle, but she had maintained a careful count, for Tony's sake. Dates meant more to him than they did to her. It was the only way they'd known when his proper birthday would be.

And now, her careful record keeping told her that the anniversary of John's death was less than three weeks away.

How much the year had changed them, she reflected.

John was gone. Jackie and Pete were gone. Tony, no longer the slightly chubby, pampered Tyler heir, but a small adventurer in his own right. Stowaway, ship's ward, and now accessory to theft and settler on an uninhabited world. The boy had always been precocious, but now after over five months on the run from people who had killed the only parents he'd ever known, there was a hardness to him.

Only ten, and Tony wasn't a little boy anymore.

Rose sighed softly to herself, remembering how she'd also had a rough coming-of-age. Estate life could be harsh, and she had lost her childish naiveté about the world at an age younger than Tony now was.

She hated that he had lost everything, but marvelled at his ability to cope. As Rose approached the TARDIS, she spotted him outside, gathering some berries from a low bush. They were one of the few local foods they knew were safe, and he had taken quite a liking to them. They were small and round, dotted with seeds like squat, orange strawberries, but they tasted remarkably like apples, though the texture was nothing alike.

Tony had two handfuls of the berries and smiled at Rose as she approached. "They're finally ripe!" he said, indicating the fruit in his hands with a jut of his chin. "Perfect birthday treat, eh Joan?"

"Joan?"

"The TARDIS. We can't just keep calling her 'the TARDIS,' can we? I thought Joan, like John, since John was the one who helped us figure out how to grow her, but we can't call her John 'cos she's a she, so Joan seemed good." Rose shook her head amusedly at the child.

"'M still calling her the TARDIS until she says otherwise." Rose pushed aside the bark-clad door, letting Tony enter before her. The structure seemed to hum in amusement around them.

"See? Joan agrees with me," Tony said, smiling. He walked to the small galley with his fruit.

Rose followed him and pulled out a bowl for him to drop the berries in. She plunked it in the sink and turned on the tap. While they had moved their drinking water rations from the shuttle and the cave into the TARDIS, Rose wasn't quite sure where the running water (or, for that matter, the pipes) came from. She wasn't about to ask, but instead was simply grateful to not have to lug around buckets anymore.

She rinsed the berries thoroughly and pulled out a Quorosi ration pack. Half of the paste was dropped into each of two bowls and she added a handful of berries alongside. She tore up a bit of the red grass that grew on almost ever level surface of this planet – which tasted rather like it smelled, something of a cinnamon flavour – and sprinkled it over the food. She handed one bowl to Tony and ruffled his hair after he took it.

"Happy birthday, Trouble Tyler."

"Thanks, Rose." They dropped down onto the two pads they'd placed in the galley for seating and ate their meal, both lost in thought.

Once the dishes had been washed and the biodegradable ration packaging left in the composting hole outside (a convenient means of disposal, if ever there was one,) Rose and Tony decided to take a walk along the beach to check on the anomaly they had seen a week prior.

Tony splashed in the waves as they strolled along. Rose smiled. While Tony had never been _stuffy,_ precisely, he had certainly had the upbringing expected of a child of the upper crust. A classical education delivered by tutors, little contact with other children, and few opportunities to play freely, to run and make trouble as a little boy should. He had learned about how to behave at dinner parties and how to tie his own tie, but not how mud felt between his toes or how to swing off monkey bars. He'd had a very privileged, but deeply lonely, childhood, and it hurt Rose's heart that this vibrant child had been so deprived of the simple freedom that should have come with being young.

She resolved that, as soon as they found their way back to her own universe, she would make sure the rest of his childhood included as many opportunities to play in the dirt and run around with friends as she could provide.

They approached the outcropping, and Rose felt the thrum of energy start in her mind again. It was louder, stronger this time. Her hands shook a bit, and Tony stilled beside her.

They rounded one of the larger stones and Rose could finally pinpoint exactly why it was she had felt this before.

She reached down and took Tony's hand, squeezing it reassuringly.

"Is that it?" the boy asked quietly, eyes wide.

More than a decade before, in a Cardiff basement, she had seen a woman die while acting as a bridge across a rift in spacetime. Rose looked into the snapping lightning that jumped across the mouth of a swirling, seething, violet _hole_ in what could only be the fabric of reality. The hairs on her neck stood up and she felt the almost electric dance of the familiar rift energy over her skin. The fragment of the Vortex that had rested quietly within her soul woke up and she felt a howling in her mind as the Bad Wolf awoke in her consciousness.

"This is it. This is the rift that's going to take us home."


	12. Violently Purple

A/N: Chapter title is one of my favourite ever descriptions of a colour, from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. It's how JKR describes the Knight Bus. Credit given where credit's due.

"Come on you bloody thing, WORK!" Rose screamed at the metal component she had just spent four hours fruitlessly attempting to integrate into the coral plinth at the centre of their TARDIS' console room. She made to throw it but stopped herself at the last moment. It had taken her three weeks to assemble the part according to John's instructions, she couldn't lose it now in a fit of pique.

She saw Tony creep into the room out of the corner of her eye and looked over at him. "Oi! Boy genius, come here and help. She likes you more anyway."

It had been three months since they had moved into the TARDIS and Rose's attempts at integrating the components John had described for her had been thwarted at every turn by the uncooperative Joan, as Tony called the ship. Well, she should be a ship, but without any sort of navigational system, she certainly wasn't going anywhere.

Rose was intensely aggravated. The rift on the beach was growing by the day, and she didn't know how long they had before it closed itself. The TARDIS remained stubbornly rooted in the black soil of Gallifrey, refusing to allow Rose to make any sort of progress towards installing navigational components.

She had read and re-read the books she'd been left. John had spent years carefully developing instructions for her to do this very thing. His earliest-dated notebook told her exactly how he'd come to believe it might be possible to get back.

 _Rose, I saw it. Kasterborous. I saw it when we were visiting New Zealand. Do you remember when we went to that observatory with all the radiotelescopes? Can't usually see the stars individually from Earth but with those high-powered telescopes in that black sky, oh it was perfect. I don't know how, Rose, but those seventeen stars are in exactly the same alignment as they were when Gallifrey existed, but that shouldn't be possible because it's locked, out of time and space. All space._

 _The gravity of Gallifrey kept its binary suns at a certain position relative to the others in that constellation. They should have moved once the planet was time locked, but they haven't moved. They are exactly where they should be and that can only be true if Gallifrey is here. And if Gallifrey is here, the Schism can be here._

 _That's how you're getting home. You're going to travel like a Time Lord, my Rose. You're going to surf through the fabric of reality in a brand new TARDIS, right from the beaches of Gallifrey. You lucky thing._

He had spent all that was left of his life working on instructions for her. Instructions about how to find this world and how to use its naturally occurring Time Vortex aperture to get back to her own reality. Instructions for how to nurture the TARDIS so let her grow, and how to outfit her as a ship. Everything he had written had born out in reality so far, except these bleeding navigational components.

Tony stepped over to her and rested a hand on her shoulder. He was nearly as tall as she, now, having hit a growth spurt in the last month. Rose hoped they could get the navigation working sooner rather than later, if only to be able to pop to another planet to get him some new clothes since the ones she had brought were now too small. He was wearing her extra trainers, and his jeans barely reached his ankles.

"Still can't get anything installed?" He looked over the console, which still held only a rudimentary time rotor, a very primitive vortex flux stabilizer knob, and nothing else.

"Every time I try, something grows in the way. John didn't write anything how to deal with a TARDIS that doesn't want to go anywhere." She crossed her arms over her chest and huffed in frustration.

Tony ran his hands over the console. "Don't know what you expect me to do about it. I understand the theory but you're the one who built a dimension cannon."

"A TARDIS isn't a dimension cannon," Rose muttered, feeling petulant at being bested, yet again, by a telepathic plant.

"Isn't that how we're using it? Theory's the same, yeah?"

She ran her fingers through her still very blonde hair. Thanks to a Quorosi hair treatment, she'd never have to worry about her roots again. It was a small thing, but she was pleased she hadn't ended up with horribly two-toned hair during their months on Gallifrey. It would have been just one more thing to frustrate her right now. Thinking on what Tony had said, she rolled his suggestion around in her head.

"Yeah, suppose. Well, if a dimension cannon could object, anyway. This TARDIS is as stubborn as you."

"Probably. I think I might have an idea. John's last notebook mentioned the Schism, Vortex, rift, whatever, having a certain phase value. Maybe if we can measure that, we can at least get her to acknowledge the rift is there, yeah? Maybe once she realizes there's something to latch onto…" he trailed off, shrugging his shoulders in a non-committal gesture.

Rose set the coordinate entry computer assembly on the floor by the console. She pulled herself up to her full height and stretched. She'd spend hours today bent over her workbench and the console and her muscles were stiff. "Now's as good a time as any, I guess. Could use a walk anyway."

They left the tree-like TARDIS and walked towards the beach. The yellow sun blazed brightly high in the sky and there wasn't even the slightest breeze. The land was utterly still. The rustle of the two Tylers walking through long grasses seemed louder in the dead air. While they were at least a kilometre away, she could hear the bubbling sound of small waves rolling onto the beach.

"Did you bring your sonic?" Tony asked Rose suddenly. His voice seemed loud in the very quiet atmosphere and Rose startled a bit at the question.

"'Course." She pulled it out and tossed it in the air, catching it mid-spin before launching it into the air again. The Doctor had fiddled with his sonic screwdriver constantly, and now that she regularly carried the comforting weight of the ultimate multi-tool, she understood the appeal. The smooth metal and the even weight of it made it the perfect object for busy fingers to manipulate.

"I did too," he said proudly, pulling out his matching device. It looked very similar to Rose's own, but was scuffed and marked up from having been a favourite play thing of the boy for many years.

It had been a Christmas gift to Tony, just a week after Rose and John had been married. She remembered the look on the boy's face when he'd pulled it out of the long, thin box John had packaged it in. At the time, it'd done little more than blink and whirr and was nothing more than a toy for the child who was only four years old. But as the years went by and Tony grew into a little scientist in his own right, John had unlocked some of the previously hidden abilities of the device and taught him how to put it to use. The screwdriver was Tony's prized possession, and Rose knew it was as much sentimentality as utility.

Jackie had insisted the sonic screwdriver be kept at Rose and John's flat in Cardiff after Tony had made a habit of surreptitiously loosening his tutor's chair's legs during lessons. After Mister George had hit the floor, hard, for the third time, and was faced with a too-innocent looking young Master Tyler, Jackie had banished the device to Wales indefinitely.

Rose had thought to grab it when she was packing the workshop into her TARDIS rucksack the day before she left for London the last time, and had waited until Tony's tenth birthday to give it back to him, newly enabled with all of its functions. She knew how crucial the sonic had proven to be on many of her and the Doctor's adventures, so she felt better knowing there was a fully functioning backup around, just in case. As it was, it'd be impossible to complete the modifications to the stubbornly planet-bound TARDIS without a sonic.

She and Tony passed by the stand of coral formations – the TARDIS forest, she'd come to call it – and stepped onto the warm, white sand of the peaceful beach. Tony, who seemed to have outgrown the worst of his tendency to chatter since their arrival on Gallifrey, nonetheless seemed to decide today was the perfect day to catch up on his talking.

"So once we get the phase reading from the rift, Schism, what on Earth – on Gallifrey? – are we supposed to call it? John calls it so many different things. Does it even have a name? I don't know. Where was I? Oh, yeah, phase reading. We should be able to tell the TARDIS with our minds, yeah? She is telepathic, and it's not like there's any sort of input mechanism for us."

"I have no idea, Tony, I really don't," Rose said, breaking into his breathless paragraph. "I guess I can try to use my connection to her to communicate it. Can't hurt to try."

"You're gonna go Bad Wolf aren't you?" His eyes lit up gleefully. He'd heard the story of when she'd swallowed the Time Vortex from John and had pestered her endlessly for about a month over whether she could still glow and dissolve matter. She had finally snapped at the child and told him it was a one-off event and would never happen again. She'd not told him, of course, about the fact that Bad Wolf still flickered like a candlelight at the back of her mind.

Rose scoffed. "No, I'm not. It was once, Tony."

"But you got to be a superhero!" He was laughing now, relishing their return to an old subject of much bickering.

"I was not a superhero, you daft child," she responded, shaking her head and fond amusement colouring her voice. "I contained a transtemporal vortex for a few minutes."

"Superhero," Tony sing-songed.

"Shut it, kid," she said with a laugh, a smile on her lips. He ran ahead and she sped up to follow him around the last bit of rock that separated them from the right. But as she reached him, she saw a look of surprise on his face. "Tony?"

His already pale skin blanched and the smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose stood out like dark points. His eyes were fixed on the Schism. The rift in the fabric of reality had been little larger than a football across when they'd initially found it.

Now she stood before the two metre wide gap in spacetime. Discharges of blue energy passed over the gaping, swirling maw of time and she lost all sense of hearing as a dull roar consumed all sound. The hairs on her skin all stood at once and she felt her heart jump in her chest. Her head began to throb and she forced herself to turn away.

Tony was frozen in place, his eyes reflecting the violently violet whirling, rippling Vortex. His mouth was fixed in a surprised O. Rose reached out to touch him and felt a shock of discharge from his skin. "Tony?" She screamed over the roaring in her ears, but could not hear her own voice.

"TONY!" Louder, now. And still he didn't see her. She felt a panicked cry rising in her throat and forced it down. "Tony, look at me!" Desperate and screaming she choked on her own words.

He screamed. High and hard and pained the scream tore from his lungs and shattered through the hurricane-like roaring in Rose's ears.

Spurred to action, she reached out for him again and felt the burn of the wavering blue energy from the Vortex. Rose forced her muscles not to withdraw at the shock and pushed her hands through the painful, swirling energy and placed them on Tony's shoulders. With all of her strength, she pulled the screaming child away, turning him enough to break his line of sight.

Her arms burned with the lashes of the Vortex discharge and her heart leapt painfully with each movement. The golden gleam constantly present at the edges of her vision consumed her field of view as the boy collapsed into her arms and they both fell to the soft sand.

She crawled slowly, arms shuddering, back the way they had come. Dragging the tall, but slight, child behind her, she rounded the high, wall-like stone that usually occluded the Vortex from view and with the last of her strength lifted Tony into her lap.

Her hands shook as she raised them to his face. She could feel his breath coming evenly and with a quick movement of her hands, was able to feel his pulse. He was still alive.

She breathed a sigh of relief and pulled the unconscious child to her chest, kissing his blonde head. Rose let out a shuddering breath as the fear settled fully on her shoulders. She rocked back and forth with him, letting the terror wash through her. She could feel his small chest expanding under her hands and knew he breathed still.

Soon, she heard him groan and she released him.

His eyes flickered open for a moment and he met her gaze. Weakly, he mouthed "Rose" and fell back into unconsciousness.

Feeling the strength returning to her legs, she put Tony gently on the sand and stood herself up, shaking out the suddenly very present aches in every muscle she had. Rose crouched down and pulled one of Tony's arms around her shoulders, shifting the rest of him to settle across her in a fireman's carry. She rose slowly, somewhat unsteadily, with the unconscious child across her shoulders, and set back the way they came.

She had only walked a few metres when she saw a shadow on the beach ahead out of the corner of her eye. Out of necessity, she had been looking down at her feet as she carried Tony. Rose chanced a look up, shifting the weight of the child carefully so as to not drop him.

There, not ten feet ahead of her, in the middle of the beach, stood their TARDIS; red bark gleaming in the bright light of the day.

Rose rushed forward the last few metres and pushed the door open with her foot. She had only enough strength to set Tony down carefully inside the entrance before the darkness claimed her and she collapsed to the floor.


	13. Allons-y

A/N: There is a theme song to this chapter. Or at least the last half of it. The song can be found all over Youtube. It's called "This is Gallifrey: Our Childhood, Our Home." I had this playing while I wrote and, frankly, love it.

Chapter Text

Rose woke in stages. The first thing she noticed was that she was on something soft and had no recollection of getting there.

Her second realization was that there was a cup of tea beside her bed, and she wanted absolutely nothing more at that moment than to consume it. She pushed herself up and reached over for the cup, raising it to her lips. The tea was lukewarm, but within moments of it hitting her stomach, she felt the fog in her mind begin to ease.

Then the panic descended. "Tony!" she yelled at her partially open door. "Tony, where are you?"

The boy himself came rushing in, looking none the worse for wear. He threw himself at Rose and took her in a tight hug.

"I was worried about you," she said, putting her arms around the child. She returned the embrace and kissed the top of his head before he released her.

" _I_ was worried about _you,_ " Tony returned. The worry in his voice was evident. "I couldn't wake you up."

Rose blinked and shook her head as the last of the fogginess in her mind evaporated. "Well I'm awake now, none the worse for wear. You seem okay."

"M' okay," he mumbled against her. Rose released him and took another sip of the rapidly cooling tea. The Doctor had been right; tea was perfect for clearing the mind. She was glad she'd stocked an entire case of teabags in the TARDIS bag before she'd left Earth.

"Do you know what happened?" she asked, looking Tony fully in the face, worry etched across her features as the full memories of what had happened came back to her.

He pursed his lips and closed his eyes, evidently trying to summarize his experience. He stayed that way for a moment and Rose was about to prompt him when he let out a long breath and opened his eyes. "I saw _time._ "

"You _saw_ time?" she repeated, quirking an eyebrow.

Tony nodded. "Yes. It was like…" his mouth moved but he couldn't seem to produce words. He raised his hands and wove them in the air in front of him, trying to describe something with shapes that he struggled to put into words. "It was like this stream that's running through everything and it's there and it's not and…" he sighed and gave up, dropping his hands to his side. "I can't describe it. It felt like my head was going to explode."

She rested her hand on his upper arm and inclined her head to meet his eyes again. "Are you feeling okay now?"

"Yeah," he affirmed quietly. "But it's hard to think about it."

Rose pulled him to her for another hug. "I know what you mean, Tony. I've seen it too, remember?"

"Is that what it felt like when you were Bad Wolf?"

She nodded. "Like my head would explode, yeah. I don't remember it much, though. John told me once they made all Time Lords look into the Vortex as kids."

Tony recoiled in horror. "Why would they do that to kids? It fucking hurt."

"Language," Rose scolded, scowling at him.

"As if you don't talk like that," the boy muttered. "I think it was warranted."

Rose inclined her head at the point. "Maybe, but don't make a habit of it. You're ten. It's inappropriate."

"Yeah, well, so's running away from your home planet and stealing a safety shuttle, but that didn't stop you."

"Point made," she said with a raise of her eyebrows. This kid was too clever by half. "But yes, Time Lords all had to go through that. It was their initiation."

"That's horrible," Tony said softly, a grim look coming over his features.

"It was their culture," Rose responded with equal softness. "It was how they became who they were. Different morality, yeah?" She had explained to him long ago the concept of relative morality that she'd learned from the Doctor during their travels. Cultural relativism was a topic that had been far easier to understand when the cultures she experienced were so varied.

"Still isn't okay to put kids through that. I'm not doing it again, that's for sure." He rubbed his temples with his fingers, frowning.

"Obviously. I'm not letting you anywhere near the Vortex again, not after you got stuck like that. Pretty sure it's ready for us to travel now, if the TARDIS will let us." A memory of her lumbering exit from the beach came back to her and her head shot up. "Did the TARDIS _move_?"

Tony grinned. "Yep! She moved all on her own. She came to get us. So she wasn't totally stuck!"

Rose moved her legs over the side of the raised, cushion-covered platform that made up her bed and stood. She was prepared to feel shaky, but was pleasantly surprised that she didn't feel any weakness. "How long was I asleep?"

The boy shrugged and followed her as she walked out to the console room. "Maybe a half hour longer than me. Don't know how long I was out, though. I think the TARDIS moved us, 'cos I woke up in my bed too."

Rose looked at the console, with its still, simple time rotor and vortex flux stabilizer, it looked absolutely nothing like the Doctor's TARDIS or the schematics he'd sketched for her in his notebooks. A thought occurred to her and she laid her hands on the console, excitement building as her thoughts coalesced into a solid hypothesis.

"Think you can talk to her, Rose?" Tony asked gently, coming up behind her. "I mean, what if she came to the beach because of you? Maybe you can navigate the TARDIS yourself."

"Was thinking that, actually." Rose reached beneath her shirt and pulled out the TARDIS key she never took off. It was the one the Doctor had given her years ago and it served no purpose here besides sentimentality, as the young TARDIS had no locks. But the metal of the key had been warm since they had moved into the newly grown timeship, and Rose could feel the remnant of the connection she had shared with the original TARDIS as Bad Wolf. When the sentient machine had looked into her before they had returned to the Gamestation all those years ago, the TARDIS' consciousness had burned a path through Rose's being that had never been completely quiet since.

"Think I might be able to, yeah," she muttered, opening her eyes. "Can't hurt to try, anyway, eh?"

Tony grinned and ran to the other side of the console. "My sonic got a reading of the phase variance of the Vortex, if that helps any. Maybe I can try thinking it really loud?"

Rose couldn't help but smile at that. "Sure, Tony, think loud."

She clasped one hand around the key and replaced the other on the console. Tony closed his eyes and put both palms firmly down on the flat stretch of coral. "Okay."

Rose looked into herself and felt for the awareness burned low on her connection to the ancient TARDIS. It was a sensation more than a vision, but she could very nearly see the light behind her eyes. . She could feel the steady, curious hum of the young TARDIS, daughter of the one Rose had known so well, surrounding and perfusing her mind.

She focused on the hill where the TARDIS had grown. She pictured it in her mind as clearly as she could and she wordlessly urged the telepathic ship to understand. She mentally traced the path up the side of the hill to the clearing, trying to draw to the fore of her mind the smell of the earth and grass, the soft crunch of dry ground under her naked feet when she toed off her shoes and ran freely through the long grasses.

It took her a moment to realize that the console itself was vibrating under her hand. The inquiring note in her mind deepened and became determined. Beneath her feet, the floor shook in an intense oscillation. Back and forth, up and down, the pinkish-orange console room swayed and shuddered. Rose dropped the key and grabbed the edge of the coral console with that hand to brace herself against the movement. Tony fell backwards, dropping out of sight as he landed on his bum with an 'oof.'

And in the space of a moment, it stopped. The ship stilled and was quiet.

Tony rose with a wince, hand rubbing at the spot over his tailbone where he had landed. "Did we move?"

Rose lifted a shaking hand from the console and looked around. Everything looked the same in the console room. She strode quickly towards the door with Tony trotting along behind her and threw open the door.

"Yes."

Tony pushed in front of Rose and stepped out. They were in the coral forest, in what could be best described as a clearing.

Rose watched as Tony turned back to her, beaming, his eyes wide in excitement. "We moved!"

She grinned back. "We moved! But this isn't where I was aiming for. I was trying to take us back to the hill."

"What'd you do to make her move?"

"I thought about where I wanted to go and just sort of thought… at the TARDIS. I don't know if that makes any sense." Rose shrugged slightly

Tony's eyes roved over the outside of the TARDIS and his hand reached out to touch the exterior. "Did you think this too?"

Rose stepped out and turned to look. Her mouth dropped open in shock and her eyes darted from the TARDIS to meet Tony's gaze and, as one, they burst into delighted whoops of laughter.

Standing in front of them, surrounded by tree-like coral structures rising out of the ground and stretching towards the burnt orange sky, was a police box, as red as the wood of the trees that grew in periodic clusters around Gallifrey's plains. At the base, instead of straight lines and sharp corners, the box was fused with the ground, rooted solidly into the pinkish-orange substrate from which the coral structures arose.

Rose, still giggling, ran a reverent hand down the flat panneled door. "Oh you brilliant thing," she said happily. The windows were not glass, but flat stretches of what could only be wood. She and Tony circled the structure, examining it from every angle. There was no light on top, but the shape of a small fixture where one should be.

"Suppose she must've seen it in my head, what I thought a TARDIS should look like." Rose felt a thrill of happiness at the sight of the wooden box. It was entirely the wrong colour, but it still drew up from within her a bubble of hope and unparalleled joy. "Tony, I'm starting to think this might actually work."

He turned to her, his face split in a wide grin. "Can we try again? Please, Rose?"

The smile on her own full lips matched his own and she ran back into the TARDIS, giddy with excitement. "No time like right now!"

As she stepped towards the console, something struck her as _different._ They had been outside only minutes, but something had changed. The mushroom-shaped growth of coral that had made up the console now shone with a dull gleam, like poorly polished metal. The smooth curves and sweeping lines now had edges, and a bar circled the circumference of the console. It occurred to Rose that having something to actually hold on to might make the next trip a fair sight easier.

Tony had vanished down the corridor but returned just as Rose completed her examination of the changed console.

"Thought this might help so we don't get thrown around again," he said, handing her the wound bundle of rope they'd kept from the shuttle.

"Good plan. Doesn't do us any good to hit our heads, eh?"

She unwound the rope and looped it several times through the bar circling the console. She motioned Tony over and started to tie a rough harness around his chest and shoulders. "Are we going to try to make it through the Vortex?"

Rose was holding an end of the rope in her teeth as she wove a complicated knot at Tony's shoulder. She removed it carefully and looked up at him, "I don't think so. Seems like that might be a little harder than just popping here and there. We should probably get some practice moving about the planet before we try something that big."

His face fell and disappointment coloured the boy's soft features. "But I'm tired of waiting, Rose. I'm tired of waiting and worrying they're gonna find us. Can't we just try?"

"Tony, the Time Vortex is dangerous. It hurt us both just hours ago, we can't just go charging headlong into it."

"The Doctor would have," he muttered petulantly.

Rose took a deep breath, steadying herself. "The Doctor isn't here. It's just me and you, not some great bloody civilization with a billion years of time travel experience. I'm not a Time Lord."

"But what if I am?" he said quietly.

Rose's eyes went wide. "What?" she croaked.

"I looked into the Vortex. That's their initiation, isn't it? Maybe I can control her now. I saw time, Rose. I saw all of it, and I can _feel_ it. Right in here," he put his hand on his chest. "What if I can direct us?"

"Tony, no. That's final. We'll try popping around the planet and then we're going to read John's notes and make sense of this and come up with a plan, alright?"

He said nothing, only nodded once, sulkily.

"Okay, then. Let's focus on the hill and try to get back there, yeah? Maybe we confused things by thinking of two different things last time."

She tied the final knot of her own makeshift harness and placed one hand on her TARDIS key, and one hand on the console as she had before. "Ready?"

Tony nodded and splayed his fingers across the greyish, gleaming stone that made up the console. He met Rose's eyes and with a grin shouted "Allons-y!"

Rose laughed loudly and closed her eyes, picturing the hill. The dewy grass after a rain, the smell of spices on the air and the humus of dead leaves and dried grasses that lined the ground beneath the trees. She could see the leaves, lit like fire at the rising of the suns, in her mind's eye. The gentle, curious probing of the ship's awareness caressed her mind and Rose felt it inspecting her foremost thoughts. She willed the ship to understand their destination, thinking of the old TARDIS' ability to be directed through time and space.

Beside her, Tony breathed steadily and softly. Rose's every cell was aware of the ship and the boy. Of the world spinning beneath them, of the stars circling above. She could feel the heartbeat of the planet below her feet, and the awareness of the corals that surrounded them, reaching out. With every ounce of her will, she urged the ship onward.

It took longer for the shaking to start, but Rose was glad of the rope when it did. The ship around them shuddered and bucked. She felt the rope cut into the soft skin at the neck of her shirt. Rose took her hand from the key and reached over for Tony's which she took in a tight grasp. She glanced out of the corner of her eye and saw the determined look on his face.

 _Take us back there,_ Rose called in her mind, focusing on the red grass-covered hill that bore a copse of trees they'd known as home for months. The steady, warm response of the ship filled her head, blocking out all sound, all light, except that which the overwhelming consciousness produced.

The hum of the TARDIS' answer rose in a spiralling crescendo of energy. Rose's eyes snapped open, unseeing. Notes of a million different pitches joined in with the TARDIS, a harmonious symphony of colour and sound that reached back through her mind. A finger of flame caressed the slumbering awareness and the world around her exploded into a golden cascade.

The console room erupted with light that was not light, and song that was not sound. An aura of golden light emanated from the two figures at the centre of the spiralling ship.

The TARDIS' roots reached deep into the black earth of Gallifrey; she reached for the roots of her sisters. Beneath the ground, a wave of resonance roared along a network of immeasurable age, a song of connection echoing across the surface of the planet. The TARDIS was one, but also many, a single branch of a grand awareness that reached out and became whole as the spark of sentience burned through every conduit.

A million million voices rose in unison and on one small beach on the edge of a silver sea, one small branch of the grand, unified consciousness breathed life into the being she found flickering at the back of her human's mind.

Fire swept through Rose's veins, but she was powerless to move her hands away from the console.

The storm of swirling light and sound and energy and reality shattered around her and condensed into a single gleaming stream which exploded into dust which settled on every surface, erasing the console room and leaving only a world of silent, white light as the shaking of the ship reached a crescendo and it felt as if the world would tear apart around them.

Rose screamed as the energy within her mind ripped outward in a wave of golden light.

The lights faded, the shaking settled, and the room returned to its normal state, all coral and stone. Rose slumped forward and slid sideways, away from the console, held awkwardly aloft by the ropes she had tied.

Tony untied himself as quickly as his hands would allow. His shaking fingers fumbled on the complicated knots Rose had tied to keep him safe, but after a moment he slid free of the bindings and rushed to Rose's side.

"Rose? Come on, Rose," he repeated as his hands worked. It took him longer to undo her harness, taught as the rope was from holding up her weight. She fell to the floor with a dull _thump_ as he undid the last knot.

Tony sat cross-legged and pulled her head into his lap. "Rose? Can you hear me?" He passed his hand over her opened mouth and almost sobbed with relief when he felt the soft breath touch his fingers.

Her skin felt hot, so Tony set her gently down and ran for the galley to fetch a bowl of water and a cloth. It took him only a moment; when he returned she remained there, unchanged.

"This feel better, Rose?" he asked in a small voice as he ran a cool cloth over her face and arms. "Is that helping?"

As the minutes ticked by and she remained stubbornly unconscious, Tony's panic grew. He patted her cheek with his hand. "Come on, Rose. I'm sorry," his voice came out as a sob. "I'm sorry, this is my fault, please don't be cross with me." He hugged her awkwardly from where he sat. "Come on, just wake up."

Tears sprang to his eyes and he sniffed loudly in the room. "Wake up, please." His voice broke as he hiccupped a sob and the tears fell in earnest.

"Please don't leave me here alone," he gasped out between sobs. "Please wake up."

Minutes swirled into hours. Tony's voice ran raw as he begged her to wake. Her skin cooled to normal, and her breath came more easily, but still she did not rise. The boy curled into her side on the warm, smooth floor, hiccupping and sniffling as he continued to implore the only person he had left in all the worlds to come back to him.

"Why won't she wake up?" he asked no one. The ambient light in the room dimmed as the TARDIS hummed a sad note.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he sobbed as he fell into a fitful sleep beside the unconscious woman.


	14. Red Grass

A/N: Please note this chapter is rather dark. The accidental death of a child is mentioned. The Doctor is brooding and depressed at this point in his story, and I felt he would be revisiting some of his darkest memories, which is why I've written the following. But be warned of the content, anyway, before you decide whether or not to proceed. This chapter can be skipped without losing the story.

Also, I have written up to chapter 23 already, and the final chapters are already written. I expect to finish writing this within the next week fairly easily.

Chapter Text

"The Time Lord Victorious is wrong." The voice of Adelaide Brooke rang in his mind, over and over. The flash of her pistol's energy discharge burned into his retinas as the world dropped out from below him.

 _What in the name of all that is have I done?_

He feels a presence in his mind and spins about only to see Ood Sigma watching him from down the snow covered street.

"I've gone too far," he says, holding back a sob. "Is this it? My death? Is it time?"

He falls to his knees, casting his eyes towards the unforgiving stars peeking through the snow-bearing clouds.

The snow melts beneath his legs, seeping through to chill his already cool skin. Pain prickles down the length of his legs as he silently begs the universe for a reprieve he know will not be granted.

Rising, he staggers into the TARDIS, her disapproving hum casting further shadows on his thoughts. Bracing his hands on the console, his head falls in defeat and the last of the Time Lords struggles to hold back tears. The enormity of perverting the power of his people – of altering a fixed point – descends on him and his shoulders begin to shake. The weight of the universe crushes him. The wrongness of the situation squeezes his hearts and he is dizzy with shame at his actions. He is no better than the council, who would have destroyed the universe to have their own way.

 _Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds._ Oppenheimer's mistranslated quote of Krishna's words occurs to him, and he reflects momentarily on the fact that the real words are even more appropriate. _I am become Time, the destroyer of worlds._ Death, Time, the Doctor is both, and worlds slip between his fingers the tighter he tries to hold them.

He takes a deep breath and then another, gathering what strength he can. There is nothing more for him in this time. Shaking himself out of his grief, he reaches for a lever on the console, dancing through the steps of dematerialisation as he had done so many thousand times before.

As the ship wheezes her farewell to the Earth, he hears the sound of the cloister bell. Its resonant clang vibrates the air around him and dread seeps into his soul.

The universe insists his time is ending. The Doctor calls out to the universe at large, "no!" He pulls a lever, and disappears into the vortex.

* * *

The Doctor ran.

Over nine hundred years, and still he ran as far and as fast as his legs and his TARDIS would carry him. But after leaving Earth behind, he found himself paralyzed in the time vortex, guilt and shame and hatred writhing within him, competing to dominate his mood.

Adelaide Brooke had died at her own hand because of him. He had tried to change a fixed point, and had brought about the suicide of one of the bravest women in human history.

A memory, an aeon past, flashed to the fore of his mind.

 _The peppery smell of redgrass crushing running feet rises into the evening air as two boys gallivant, screaming in delight, through the waving sea of grass towards a stand of berry bushes._

 _The taller of the boys stops and bends towards the ground, vanishing behind the scarlet grass in a crouch._

" _What is it Kos?" the blonde boy asks, coming up behind his friend._

 _Koschei draws up his cupped hands and stands. "It's a leero. Looks hurt," he says. With delicate fingers, he holds up one of the small creature's iridescent blue wings. The silky feathers beneath were soaked with deep red blood and caked with black earth. The creature shuddered with each breath and peeped weakly._

" _Let's bring him to my father," says the smaller boy. "He's good at fixing things." He rifles through the pocket of his plain grey robe and pulls out the small cloth he'd planned to use for gathering berries. "Give him here."_

 _The two boys, their game forgotten, walk back towards the heavy-beamed house on the edge of the estate gardens. "Come on Thete, pick it up!" Koschei calls to the smaller boy whose shorter legs have caused him to fall behind._

" _Don't call me that!" the smaller one yells back. "It's not my name!"_

" _And what right do you have to a name?" sneers a taller child who is exiting a small shed full of toys and games. "Mongrel like you."_

 _The blonde-haired boy stands frozen, fixing his eyes on the injured leero in his hands. He gulps down a breath, and then another, willing tears not to come._

 _A moment later, a red blur whizzes by him and the taller boy's face contracts in pain as Koschei connects with his chest, running at full speed. "Shut up Rass," Koschei screams, fist flying for his brother's face. "Shut up shut up shut UP!" It connects with a smack and the taller child falls backwards. Raising his arms to protect his face from his little brother's onslaught, he makes no effort to break his fall._

 _With a sickening crunch, his head collides with a rock hidden in the grass._

 _Koschei's hands still and he jumps away from his fallen brother. Eyes wide, he looks to his friend. "Look what you made me do," he growls._

 _Seeming to shake himself from a trance, Thete kneels beside Rass. "Go get help!" he yells to Koschei. He gently deposits the leero on the ground, in a pile of soft grass, and reaches around Rass's head to where he's bleeding. He presses the bit of cloth to the wound and murmurs words of reassurance to his friend's older brother._

" _Come on now, Rass. Kosch'll be back soon with someone, alright? They'll fix you right up. You'll be back at the Academy right after harvest holiday." He repeats his words, over and over, as the light fades from the sky and no one comes._

 _His father finds him kneeling in the dirt beside Rass' body, his hands caked with dried blood, a dead songbird in his lap wrapped in a reddened cloth. The small boy shakes with sobs, his tears sparkling in the unforgiving light of the stars._

 _He had begged his father to take him back in time, to use the power of a Time Lord to fix the events of the day. To bring Rasserin back to life. To give him enough time to help the injured bird. But his father had refused, and had talked of their duty to time, to maintain the integrity of timelines without interference._

 _As he falls into a fitful sleep hours later, the blood washed off his hands, he seethes with all the hatred a seven year old child can muster. For his father's callousness in the face of tragedy. For his refusal to do all he could to help make things better with all the power his position as a Time Lord granted him. He swears he will never be so cruel._

* * *

He felt the same as he had that cold night in the field. As useless and hopeless and angry as he had been as a child

Nothing he did changed anything.

They all still died.

Worlds still ended.

What good was having the power of the Time Vortex at his command if everything he saved turned to ash and worlds slipped faster between his fingers the harder he tried to hold them.

He looked down at his hands and could see only the blood of billions of lost lives for which he was responsible.

" _You would make a good Dalek."_ The words of the hateful creature in Van Statten's vault echoed through his mind.

"I've killed more of my people than the Daleks ever did," he said aloud to the empty TARDIS, his voice raw from disuse. It had been weeks since he had last spoken.

He sat on the edges of dying systems and watched planets meet fiery ends as their suns exploded into supernovae. Stellar nurseries swirled around the TARDIS as he named newborn stars, then travelled billions of years ahead to see what became of the planets that congealed around them from the dust and grit of space.

The universe lay before him for his study; grand and beautiful, an intricate dance of matter and time, magnificent in its destructiveness and its ability to give rise to all that is.

All this beauty before him, and nought a one to share it with. They were all gone.

Rose, locked away in another universe, hopefully living happily in a house with doors and carpets and a mortgage. Wait, no mortgage. Rich father; she probably wouldn't need to borrow from a bank. With her family and his other self, living the life he never could.

Donna, with all that she had become locked away in her mind. Unable to know her own truth lest she burn to death.

Martha, the idealistic aspiring physician now a hardened soldier, working for U.N.I.T.. A cog in a machine larger than herself; the rosy-eyed idealism of her youth crushed under the weight of death and tragedy. His mistakes had cost her dearly.

Jack, the man who shouldn't be, his timeline solidified and polluted with the poison of rigidity.

Sarah Jane, oh his Sarah Jane, who had finally got on with her life. Who had a fantastic son, and by all appearances an exciting, but very _human,_ life.

And so many, on and back through the years. Faces flashed before his eyes. The people who had come along.

Not even a year ago, the room where he now stood had shone with the energy and vibrancy of celebration. The faces of his friends, his family, reflected the glow of the time rotor as they cheered their victory. Hugs and kisses, tears and joy and pain. Even he had lost himself in the exuberance of the assembly of all he held dear.

That the return of Earth to its own cosmic home was a pyrrhic victory had not yet been clear. That millions had died, and an entire race been wiped out at his – sort of – hands was something they had not had time to digest, to realize.

In the golden hours before they had all parted, the Doctor had looked across the joyous faces of his companions and, for perhaps the first time since the fall of Gallifrey, felt the ache to belong begin to ease.

But now he sat, alone. The ebullient happiness was long gone from the darkened console room, existing only as an echo in his mind. There was no Jack, smile broad and gleaming, to clap a hand on his shoulder and say something wildly inappropriate. No Martha to pull him from his shell, piece by excruciating piece. No Donna to hold him back from what he had done to the brave and wise Adelaide. No Rose, to curl against him on the library sofa, to read with him, to listen to his stories and share silly films with. Rose, who had promised him forever, even she couldn't stay.

The TARDIS' presence in his mind nudged him softly, worriedly. He felt her concern, such that it was, and opened his mouth to assure his oldest, dearest friend that she would not be rid of him so easily. But he found the words did not come, and he dropped into the jump seat as the weight of all he had lost consumed him.

He wept for Gallifrey. For his children and grandchildren, long dead in the War. For the two billion, four hundred and seventy two million Gallifreyan children he had condemned because of the cruelty of their elders. For the billions he could not save, and for those he chose not to help. He shouted his grief into the empty console room, a wordless scream of rage and loathing for what he had been forced to do, what he had chosen to do, and what he had failed to accomplish. For the man he had been before the War had stolen all that he was. He had saved the universe at the cost of himself.

And his punishment was to live, to see those he loved fall away. Now his song was ending and even for all the pain, he didn't want to go. This universe of unremitting loss had also given him such beauty.

He took a steadying breath and walked to the doors of the Tardis. The long fingers of his hand rested against the jamb as he pushed open the door to reveal the violent whirling of the Time Vortex.

The last of the Time Lords sat at the edge of his TARDIS' open door, legs hanging down into the entirety of spacetime; the ache of the Vortex suffusing his every cell. He closed his eyes and breathed carefully as he listened to the song of time, her constant thrum along the threads of reality a voice so few could hear but which ran through the very blood of his people.

He felt a cacophony building. A disturbance in the flow, like a boulder in a stream or a knot along a spooled thread it disturbed the lines around it.

A mess of disharmonious screeching reached through space; a derangement in time's harmony so great that the universe itself called for him, a message across all creation.

He was marked and travelling on borrowed time. His song would end, and soon.

 _Only one thing to do then,_ the Doctor told himself.

 _Run._


	15. House Call

He had been in the Vortex, hanging in time, when the message came.

Feeling the whisper of awareness that told him to check his psychic paper, he withdrew it from his jacket pocket and read the words, called out across time and space, a desperate plea for aid.

 _Please don't leave me here alone._

"You hear that, old girl?" he asked the TARDIS. "Time to make a house call."

He flipped a switch and turned several dials. A series of buttons lit up and he pushed them in sequence, dashing about the console pulling levers here and pulling knobs out there. The TARDIS wheezed loudly and shook, spiralling off through the Vortex.

The TARDIS rematerialized a moment later. The Doctor checked his navigation monitor and furrowed his brow. He whacked the side of it with an open hand, but the circular writing did not change.

"There's no way that's right," he muttered to himself. He strode to the door, sonic in hand and pulled it open. "No..."

His wide, surprised eyes adjusted quickly to the bright light outside. Red grass stretched out before him as far as the eye could see. In the distance, a flat-topped mountain rose from the plains, outlined sharply against the orange horizon. A red sun blazed brightly high overhead, whilst a yellow orb rode low in the sky to the south.

"This is not possible," he said to himself. Eyes wide, his head turned left and right. He spun around, taking in the sight of a very familliar world that could not exist.

Mount Perdition, scarlet grass clinging to her sides, reached upward, breaking the flat line of the distant horizon. The Doctor reached out and grasped a handful of the tall, swaying grass in his hand. He crushed it in his fingers and lifted it to inhale the familiar, beloved sweet and spicy fragrance.

He closed his eyes and listened, the tiniest thread of hope creeping to life in his breast, but there was nothing.

Gallifrey turned slowly beneath his feet, her suns warmed his skin, the galaxy around him spiraled onward about its black hole, but there was still only silence where the minds of billions of Time Lords should have intersected with his own.

Except… there. A flicker of awareness calling out into the aether. A quiet desperation. To the west.

He ran back into the TARDIS and adjusted the ship's bearing. A moment later, the ship wheezed into nothing and breathed itself back into existence a thousand miles away.

When he stepped out this time, his hearts stopped.

A few steps away stood something that shouldn't exist on a planet that couldn't be here. Surrounded by the towering formations of naturally growing TARDIS coral, stood a mirror image of the one from which he had just exited. Except this one was red; as red as the wood of the shining trees and the grass that went on forever. The windows were flat expanses of wood, not glass, and there was neither handle nor telephone box on the doors. He circled the structure, looking for a key hole or any sort of indication that there might be a way to gain entry, but he found none.

Deciding to try something new, he stood in front of the doors and raised his hand. Adopting a confident stance, he snapped his fingers loudly. The door did not open.

The Time Lord ran his sonic over every side of the box, around the edges, along the seam of the door, over each window, and down to where the apparent TARDIS was fused to the coral that grew all around them, almost as if it had melted to the ground, or grown out of this very spot. The sonic told him nothing. It detected the presence of a wooden box and nothing more.

Utterly confused, and deciding it was his best option for getting answers, he raised his hand and knocked. After a moment, he pressed his ear to the door and listened.

He could hear shuffling within, and a muffled voice he was unable to make out. He straightened, surprised. There was someone in there.

* * *

Tony woke, stiff and uncomfortable, to a knocking at the door. The boy froze in terror. Had they miscalculated with the Quorosi ship would travel by this system for its monthly trips, or had they jumped ahead in time?

Bile rose in his throat as alarm claimed him. He turned to Rose and put his hands on her shoulders and shook. "Rose, come on, wake up. Rose I need you. There's someone here. Please, Rose!" his voice was high and panicked.

The TARDIS hummed reassuringly around him, but it did not calm him.

"ROSE!" he hissed urgently in her ear, shaking her as hard as his young muscles would allow. The knocking at the door sounded again.

"If you don't let me in, I'm coming in anyway," said a muffled male voice from outside.

"You can't come in!" Tony shrieked. "Go away!"

"A child?!" the voice outside said, alarmed.

"Go away!" the boy screamed. His eyes were wide and his breath burst from his lungs in ragged gasps.

Something heavy rested against the door of the TARDIS. "Are you alright in there?" The voice was soft and sounded worried.

Tony shook Rose desperately. Tears dripped from his cheeks onto her shirt, and still she didn't move.

"She's hurt," he sobbed loudly. "She's hurt and it's my fault and she won't wake up." His voice broke and the tears came with a renewed vengeance.

"I'm coming in," said the man with determination. "I'm not going to hurt you," he added. There was shuffling and a heavy thud followed by a muttered curse.

After a minute, Tony heard a soft scraping at the door, which was hidden from his sight by the console, and then it pushed open with a soft whoosh. He pressed his face to Rose's shoulder and wrapped his arms around her. He shook with sobs and terror, snot and tears soaking the neck of Rose's shirt.

He felt a hand on his shoulder which withdrew quickly. Tony turned and looked up into a very shocked face. Tony launched himself at the lean man, throwing his arms around him and clinging tightly as relief flooded him.

"John! Help her! Please help her!"

Bowled over by the weight of the child, the man fell backward onto the floor with a thump as the words registered. He looked over at the unconscious person on the floor and his face paled. He shook off the boy and rolled to his hands and knees. He reached a long-fingered hand to the woman's face and reverently caressed her cheek.

" _Rose_ ," he breathed, the word a prayer in its solemnity.

Eyes wide and confused, he looked back at the boy. "How about you tell me who you are and how you got here and what the _hell_ Rose Tyler is doing in a TARDIS on a planet that shouldn't exist?"

As joy and panic and abject terror warred within his mind, a few pieces fell into place for Tony.

"Doctor?"

"Do I know you?"

"No but I know you. Can you help her? I'll tell you everything, but please, help her."

The tall man rose without taking his eyes off of the woman's face. "Is there anywhere better we can lay her down?" The boy nodded. The Doctor bent and reached a hand under each of her shoulders, shuffling her head so that it rested on his forearms. "Can you take her legs?"

Tony moved quickly and stood between Rose's knees, wrapping an arm around each of her legs. Together, they lifted the unconscious woman and Tony led the Doctor to Rose's bedroom.

Tony returned to the console room to fetch the bowl of water and the cloth. When he came back to Rose's room, the Doctor was seated at her side, gently stroking her cheek with one hand as he waved his whirring sonic screwdriver over her, a worried expression on his face.

He examined the reading and some of the worry faded. Tony set the bowl on the small outcropping of coral that served as a nightstand in Rose's room. "I think she's in a recovery sleep," the Doctor said gently. "Sleeping _very_ deeply, she's done this before, and I expect it has something to do with why you are here."

"It's my fault," Tony said. His eyes went wide as he remembered his well-ingrained manners and extended his hand. "Tony Tyler, by the way. Hello."

The Doctor's eyebrows leapt up towards his hairline while he shook the boy's proffered hand firmly. "Pete and Jackie's boy?"

"Yep," he said, popping the P just as John always did. "I've heard a lot about you. From you."

The Time Lord ran a hand along the back of his neck and cringed lightly. "Suppose I should be worried, then." Tony noticed that the Doctor's hand was resting on Rose's own, and he smiled. The gesture appeared unconscious on his part. "Where am I, then? My other me? Did I not come?"

"John. John died." Tony's voice was very small and sad. He hung his head as memories swept over him. "They're all dead. Mum and Dad and John. S'just me'n Rose now."

A wave of sadness washed over the Doctor's face and he reached a hand over to place on the boy's thin shoulder. "I am so very sorry to hear that, Tony Tyler."

The Doctor watched as Tony took a few moments to pull himself back from the edge of grief. John was over a year gone now, and Jackie and Pete more than six months. Time had dulled some of the sharpness of the pain, but it still lanced through his heart when he thought of them. "S'been a while," he said quietly. "Just us for a long time now."

The man who looked so much like John pulled Rose's thin blanket up to her chest and carefully adjusted it to cover her. "I think Rose'll be alright soon enough. Let's go get some tea, eh? Do you have any tea?" Tony nodded, and led the Doctor to the small galley.

The Doctor sat on one of the cushions Tony indicated to him and the boy set about gathering the tea things. He fetched down the cups, their very last box of Twinings tea bags, and the pitcher he used for heating water. Pulling his sonic out from his pocket – and missing the extremely surprised look on the Doctor's face – he swept his finger down the side to choose the correct setting and pointed it at the pitcher, boiling the water in a few seconds.

A minute later, he presented the Doctor with a cup of tea, and sat down with his own. "No sugar or milk, sorry." He blew across the top of the steaming beverage and inhaled the familiar aroma.

The Doctor took a sip of the scalding tea and set the cup down on the floor to allow his tea to cool, as there was no table to place it on. "So, Tony, what happened?"

The boy stared into his tea as if it held all the answers, and weighed what to say. Deciding on the truth, he began mechanically, rushing through a simplified explanation. "Torchwood. They turned on dad and killed him, and they came after Rose and mum and me. I saw them show up at the house. Rose got us out – she knew something was going to happen. Mum… mum died saving us." Tony swallowed the thickness that tried to choke his voice.

"John – that's the other you – and Rose had made some plans and so when everything went wrong, we left Earth. John died a year ago, but he left these books for us. Had all this information about growing a TARDIS and using the Schism to get back to Rose's universe, where we'd be safe. So we did that."

The Doctor looked at him evenly as his very simple explanation of a very impossible occurrence, running a hand over his face in a habitual gesture of surprise and exasperation.

"Did we make it?" Tony asked uncertainly. "Where did we end up?"

"Well, you're in the right universe, that's for sure."

Tony smiled tightly. _They did it!_ "Where, exactly?"

The Doctor's expression was dark when he responded. "Well, that's the question, isn't it? You're on a planet that shouldn't be here."

" _Which_ planet?"

"Gallifrey." The word was laced with sorrow and confusion.

Tony's smile grew. "You mean we brought the planet with us?"

"You _what?_ " He had a look of shock and confusion on his face.

The boy was grinning now. "That explains why Rose is so tired. We didn't just go through the Vortex, we pulled the whole planet along too! Oh that's brilliant!"

Tony jumped up from his seat and ran to the TARDIS doors as fast as his legs would carry them. He threw open the door and looked outside.

It was the same coral clearing he had last seen, only this time, a few feet away stood a blue police box. The TARDIS he had heard hundreds of stories about. He ran over to the blue box and ran his hands along the wood reverently, the grain rough under his fingers. A moment later, he realized the Doctor was behind him. He turned to the tall man, his face split in a wide grin.

"We made it, and you found us." A laugh bubbled up from within him and a moment later he was consumed by manic laughter. The Doctor watched him, concerned, but didn't speak. "I can't believe it." Tony shook his head in amazement and walked back into his own TARDIS.

"How did you find us?" he called back over his shoulder as the Doctor stepped in behind him.

The Doctor pulled out a small leather wallet and handed it to Tony who flipped it open.

 _Please don't leave me here alone,_ it read. The words he'd said to Rose when she wouldn't wake.

"Psychic paper. It catches… distress calls now and then," the Doctor said, taking it back from Tony's small hands. "And I was _very_ surprised that it lead me to my home planet, which I know for a fact _isn't here anymore._ I have no idea how you two did what you just did. Sucking an entire planet through the Time Vortex. That shouldn't be possible."

"But it is, isn't it? When the Daleks made that bomb thing? Before John and you got separated? John told me they pulled planets out of time and space."

The Doctor's eyebrows shot up in surprise that the boy had any sort of understanding of what should or could be possible. "Yes, they pulled some planets out of time and space, but not through universes. _That_ shouldn't have been possible."

Tony shrugged. "Well, it was. You've been wrong before."

An amused smile on his lips, the Doctor reached over to ruffle Tony's hair. "I suppose I have. I should know by now not to tell Rose Tyler something's impossible."

"Wouldn't be the first time she jumped dimensions to find you and prove you wrong," Tony said, smiling.

"This is true," the Doctor agreed. "Stubborn woman, that Rose Tyler, eh?"

Tony nodded emphatically. "That's putting it mildly. I'm going to go check on her." He turned and left the console room, the Doctor close behind as he made the short walk to Rose's bedroom.

"What did you mean when you said it was your fault?" the Doctor asked as he watched Tony carefully apply a cold compress to the blonde woman's forehead.

"I meant it's my fault. We were just going to jump back to where the TARDIS was before. It sort of came to us a little while ago. Yesterday, maybe? I don't know; hard to keep track of time here."

"Not for me," the Time Lord added haughtily, a playful smile on his lips.

"Yeah, well, for us anyway. But yeah, the TARDIS just moved for the first time yesterday, when something happened at the Vortex."

"What, exactly, happened?" The Doctor leaned forward, his expression intent. "Tell me _exactly_ what happened."

Tony drew his lips into a thin line. "I'm not sure I can describe it. We were going to measure it and I looked at it and I just _saw_ it, and I got stuck. Like I couldn't look away, and there was, like, this crack that was just _wrong_ and it hurt." He shook his head to clear it. "It _really_ hurt. Rose pulled me away, and when I woke up, the TARDIS had moved."

"You looked straight into the Time Vortex?"

"Yeah," Tony said softly, cringing as the memory of the pain echoed in his head. "Never done anything that hurt so much."

The Doctor sat up straight again and ran his fingers through his hair. "I know. It's been over nine hundred years for me and I still remember that pain." He let out a long breath. "I think I understand what happened. There was a disruption in a fixed point recently – a point in time that can't ever change." Tony saw a pained look pass over the man's eyes, and filed away the information to ask about later. "That's probably what allowed you to pass through. Least that's the best I can come up with."

Tony put the cloth he'd been using to cool Rose's face back in the bowl and returned it to the nightstand. "So did we get sucked through because of a disruption? I thought it was because I was telling the TARDIS to come here."

"Tony," the Doctor said seriously, his voice calm and even. "I don't think you could have forced the TARDIS through the walls of the dimensions no matter how hard you tried, not if they were intact. If it's anyone's fault that Rose got hurt, it's mine. That crack you saw, it's a fixed point being altered. It tears the fabric of reality itself. It," he paused, his expression darkening further. "It reverted. The timelines went back, but there were still changes. That leaves a bit of a scar."

Tony nodded his understanding and turned his eyes back to the sleeping woman. "Is Rose going to be okay?"

"I think so," the Doctor said softly, returning to his earlier seat at her side. "Did she go all golden light-flaming aura-vengeful goddess thing?" He mimed an aura with his hands, circling his head in exaggerated motions.

The boy blinked in surprise at his word choice. "You mean Bad Wolf? I think. Maybe. It was all kind of bright and shaking and loud. Kind'a hard to remember, to be honest, but it was bright."

The Doctor smiled. "Well, she should wake up on her own before long, if that's the case then. I'm not reading anything wrong with her. Took her probably twelve hours the first time she did it. The TARDIS would've done most of the work of pulling you guys through; she probably just tapped into Rose's connection with my TARDIS."

Tony patted a wall. "Not bad for a baby TARDIS, eh? Good girl." He muttered the last to the ship in an undertone.

The Doctor smiled widely at him, all straight white teeth. "Good girl, indeed. Maybe a little too enthusiastic, to pull a whole planet along for the ride, but she didn't destroy the whole of creation, and she brought you guys to me so I can't complain too much I suppose."

Rose murmured softly and her eyes flickered open a moment. Tony rushed over and leaned over her. "ROSE!" he cried happily, leaning down to hug her tightly. "I'm so happy you're not dead."

"Me… too," she muttered sleepily, barely conscious. "Where's the lorry that hit me?" she joked.

"Back on Earth, where there're no Zeppelins and Torchwood isn't evil. Well, mostly not evil. Well, I say mostly…" At the sound of the Doctor's voice, Rose's eyes snapped open and fixed on his face. He met her gaze and his words trailed off into silence.

"John?"

"No."

"Oh my God."

"Not quite."

"Doctor?" her voice shook on the syllables of his name.

"Yes."

Her eyes fell closed and she took several deep breaths to steady herself. The Doctor reached over and pulled her into a tight embrace. He buried his face in her hair, his chest heaving as he tried to breathe through the tightness in his ribs.

"You found us," Rose whispered.

"No, you found me."

* * *

A/N: *Credit to Moffat and Gatiss for a joke I shamelessly stole from Sherlock, but which seemed to fit just too perfectly in this chapter. "Oh my God."/"Not quite." Is from S03E01.


	16. Six to One

As soon as he'd ascertained that Rose was able to stand, he'd ushered her – without giving her a moment's chance to object – out of her TARDIS and into his own, which was parked only a few feet away. Tony had trotted along behind them.

Rose told him it had felt like coming home to enter the blue box, and she had let her fingers trail lovingly over the console as she passed it on her way to the infirmary where the Doctor insisted on examining her carefully.

He waved the sonic over her, and peeked in her eyes with a torch-like device. He even used an actual stethoscope to listen to her heart and lungs.

"Everything seems to be in working order," he concluded after fifteen minutes of examination, brow furrowed with curiosity but not overly worried. He helped Rose off the examination table and then reached a hand out to Tony. "Your turn."

"I'm sure that's not necessary, Doctor," Rose said suddenly. "Tony doesn't like medical exams."

"I'm not the one who fainted," Tony objected as well, stepping back.

The Doctor looked to Rose sharply and turned to speak gently to the boy. "You just jumped through the Time Vortex in a juvenile TARDIS whilst towing a planet and you were exposed to someone who had previously absorbed the Time Vortex itself and was radiating who knows what energy. There are so very many ways you could be _not_ okay."

Rose took Tony's hand and headed towards the door, leaving no room for argument. "I'll examine him myself, it's alright. Let's have some tea, yeah? I could use a cuppa."

The Doctor looked at Rose strangely, disapproval etched on his features, but it was gone after a moment. He followed her and Tony silently out the door into the corridor, finding that the galley had relocated conveniently across the hall from the infirmary.

Rose rushed towards the cupboards and pulled open the one where teas were usually stocked. She rummaged through the lowest shelf and pulled out a small, green tin. "You still have it," she said softly, turning to smile at the Doctor. He smiled back. "I have missed this tea more than you know."

He watched as Rose reached automatically for the kettle and then opened the cupboard where he'd always kept her favourite teapot, a clear glass contraption he'd picked up on Earth. The tea cooled too quickly in it, but Rose liked it so he'd always tolerated the slightly cooler infusion. She scooped three spoonfuls of the colourful Ayurian spiceflower loose tea into the infuser.

"How long has it been?" Rose asked while pouring the boiling water into the teapot. "For you, I mean."

"Just over a year since the reality bomb," he said softly, understanding without asking that she was enquiring as to how long it had been since they parted. "You?"

"Six. Six years. Tony had just turned four when we got back; he's ten now." She pulled down three tea cups and hooked them through her thumb, carrying them and the teapot back to the well-worn galley table. She deposited the tea things and turned towards the fridge for a pot of cream.

The Doctor automatically reached for the sugar bowl which never left the small table. He added a spoonful to each of two cups and looked over at Tony, whose eyes were roving everywhere, taking in the sights of the ship, in inquiry. The boy nodded, so the Time Lord added sugar to the third cup as well. Rose returned and without asking, poured some cream into two of the cups, leaving the middle one. She carefully dispensed the tea and reached for the cup without cream and lifted it to inhale the rich aroma.

"Six years," said the Doctor, shaking his head in disbelief.

"Asynchronous timelines. Either that, or there is a linear relationship and we not only travelled through universes but went back in time too. Or both. It wasn't exactly a planned jump with time to adjust for all the temporal eddies that were pouring out of the Vortex." The Doctor looked at Rose curiously.

"Always talks like that now. She got her doctorate in dimensional physics," Tony piped up.

He smiled broadly. "Really?"

"From Oxford," the boy added proudly.

"I never doubted your brilliance," said the Doctor with a grin that reached his eyes. Rose's eyes jumped to meet his, a surprised but sad look therein. He felt taken aback at the expression and arched an eyebrow in inquiry.

She sipped the colourful, rich tea to give herself a moment before responding. "That's what he said. John. When I graduated. Word for word."

"I see."

"Did Tony tell you about…"

"Yeah. I'm sorry, Rose." An awkward pause descended over the three of them. "Can I ask..?" the Doctor broached the topic gently.

"How he died?" Rose responded, her face blank. He saw her hand move and looked down at where she twisted a pinkish metal band around finger. He'd not noticed it earlier and his hearts sank in his chest as it dawned on him what she had actually lost. "Best we can figure, the Metacrisis generated a body that wasn't stable. His cells kept oscillating between human and Time Lord biology, so things just went haywire and stopped working. It was kind of like cancer. He passed away a year ago," she finished sadly.

"He took three years to die," Tony said, his voice harder than any child's words had right to be. "I was there when he had his first seizure." His eyes were damp and his face bore the trauma of the memory clearly. "I barely remember him from before he got sick." Rose reached over and pulled him into a sideways hug and pressed a kiss to his brow as tears began to fall from the boy's eyes.

The Doctor looked at the pair with a horrified expression. "I am so unbelievably sorry. I don't even know what to say." For once, his mouth failed him. He looked from Rose to Tony, devastation writ large across his features. "I'm sorry."

"Me too," Rose said softly.

Rose and the Doctor fell silent and watched Tony with sad eyes. Rose rubbed his back and murmured words of comfort to him as the boy's attempts at keeping a brave face gave way under the distress of remembering something as horrible as witnessing the slow death of a loved one. The Doctor looked on, feeling utterly helpless.

It seemed, no matter what he did, he was destined to hurt her. This woman who punched through time and space, who did the impossible time and time again. He had hurt her. Again. And not only her, but this bright little child who now sobbed brokenly in Rose's arms.

In trying to give her forever, he had only caused her more pain. His hearts beat heavily beneath his ribs, the weight of the sadness he felt for her pressed in on him, guilt for what he'd done to her by locking her away in another world to watch him die crushing him.

Tony's crying intensified as it seemed the enormity of his losses collapsed on him at once; a day of emotional highs and lows shattering what barriers he had built to keep the pain at bay. He whimpered for his parents and his world. Rose rocked him gently, her shuddering breaths as she attempted to soothe the boy the only clue that she was just as affected by the intensity of the day as the child.

Feeling as if he were intruding on an impossibly private moment, the Doctor stood and quietly left the galley. He staggered towards the console room and sat heavily in the jump seat. He propped his elbows on his knees and bent down, covering his face with his hands.

 _What had he done?_

He had loved her enough to set her free, to send her home with her family to live a long and very human life with himself. Or at least a version of himself who would grow old with her, and die with her, and live the slow days he never would. It had rent each of his hearts in two to leave her behind to know that all the coming happy days she would live would be lost to him. But she would _live_ in that other universe, with that other him, and he would not have to watch her fade.

Instead she'd watched him die a drawn out death, from what the boy had said. He hadn't sent her into a world of happy days and long years. She had had to watch him die by pieces and had needed to continue on without him.

He had told her that humans decay, that they wither and die, that Time Lords were cursed to live on alone.

The Doctor clasped his fingers together behind his head as a well of despair sprung up from within him at the dawning realization that he had condemned the woman he loved to the very thing he didn't think he himself could bear.

And now, she had broken through the fabric of reality yet again and found him as he marched assuredly towards his own death. He had warned this woman that he could never spend the rest of his life with her, but here she was, in his universe, so very much alive, while he knew with certainty that his own song would soon end.

"Tony fell asleep," Rose's hollow voice broke into his sombre thoughts. "I put him in my old room."

He looked up at her, his eyes dark and his expression tight with grief and smothered rage at his own failures. It was clear to him that she was hovering on the edge of stability herself after consoling the devastated child. The happiness of their reunion could not withstand the tide of loss that finally found an outlet now that they were safely in Rose's own home universe.

The woman looked around the console room and took a jagged breath. She squared her shoulders and bit down on the inside of her quivering lips to still them.

"I am _so_ sorry, Rose," he whispered thickly. He took one of her hands and tugged her down to sit beside him. He reached his arms around her and pulled her head to rest on his shoulder. Her arms came up around him and he felt her tight muscles ease in his embrace.

After a time, the wave of grief crested and passed over her, Rose's posture eased and pulled herself from his embrace but remained close to his side. She began to tell the Doctor of their hardships. She told him of their escape from Earth in a Judoon transport ship, of seeing Jackie shot down, and the months they'd spent in cargo holds and crew's quarters aboard starships from a dozen worlds.

"You were a singer?" he asked her, eyes wide with surprise after she'd told him of how they'd made a living on the star cruises.

She nodded. "Good one, too. I was the headliner on the best ship in the Quorosi fleet."

"Can't see you as a singer," the Doctor teased. Rose shoved him playfully.

He listened with rapt attention as she told him about the peaceful months she and Tony had spent on the beautiful, but otherwise uninhabited, Gallifrey. She told him how the gentle waves and warm winds had soothed their burdened souls and allowed them time to heal after what they'd been through. She tightened her grip on his hand as she recounted her fear when Tony was struck immobile by the Schism, and his hearts leapt into his throat as she described the uncontrolled hurricane of energy that resulted when they were pulled through the Schism back into Rose's original universe.

"I never thought we'd actually get here," she said quietly, a finger gently tracing the bones of his hand where it rested in hers. "I mean, his hypothesis was sound, but John made all his calculations based on a few assumptions that he couldn't even confirm from Earth. It was a huge stretch."

"Not really," the Doctor said softly. "It used to be that you could pop between dimensions and be home in time for tea, remember me telling you that? You didn't do anything that Time Lords didn't do for thousands of years. You just did it with a little more… flair."

Rose laughed weakly. "You mean bringing a planet along for the ride?"

"Yeah… I can't say it's been done that way before."

"Well, I do like to travel in style," she said, smiling. "But really, I doubted we'd make it back. I think I'm still having a hard time believing you're here." She reached out and put a hand on his very solid, flesh and bone chest. Not just an image.

The Doctor met her smile with one of his own and covered her hand with his. He felt the ring on her finger and sobered, his mind taking a new direction. "You only ever refer to him as 'John,'" he said softly. "Why?"

Rose drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Because that's who he was to me. At first I called him Doctor most of the time. Then over time, he became John Lord and he stayed John because it was easier than remembering not to call him Doctor at work or at the university. Tony called him Doctor John for two years," she smiled gently at the memory. "He couldn't go through life just being called the Doctor, not on Earth. And I couldn't use your actual name."

"So you do know it." He watched her steadily, his face expressionless.

She nodded. "I do." Rose twisted the ring off her finger and handed it to him.

He turned it over in his hands, and brought it closer to his eyes to read the minuscule Gallifreyan writing inside; his name and hers in the elegant script, wound together with the seal of Rassilon between them, completing the circle. He let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

"You had an Earth wedding?" he asked, indicating the ring as he gave it back to her.

Rose shook her head softly, returning the ring to its home on her finger. "No, I didn't want one. Can you imagine my mum with an unlimited budget and a wedding to plan?" She smiled despite the sadness in her eyes, and she saw the look of mock terror he shot her. "No, we had a Gallifreyan ceremony."

"Really?" disbelief coloured his voice.

"Yeah, with Gallifreyan vows. Still don't know how he managed to get me to speak and understand it for the ceremony, since I can't even speak it now. It was just the one time."

The Doctor looked at her intently. "Do you know what they mean, the vows?" She could see the uncertainty in his eyes, a faint flicker of hope in a sea of fear.

"Of course." She returned his gaze with equal intensity and spoke very softly. "I knew before I spoke them." She looked across the room, her eyes unfocused as she gathered her thoughts.

Herlooked at her steadily, trying to assess whether she truly understood what it was that she had promised. While the marriage vows of his people came in many forms, including ones that bound only the current regeneration which was the form the Doctor had used in his first marriage, a match of obligation instead of love, Gallifreyan vows could encompass forever. A concept of forever that no human language could truly describe, not the way Gallifreyan could. He knew with certainty that his duplicate would have promised Rose forever, just as he would. Forever, in all lives. Which, as it so happened, would now include him; the only living regeneration of the Doctor that Rose had married. "I'll understand if you don't –"

Rose cut him off. "Do you have any idea how long it took me to get used to the thought that he was still you?" He shook his head. "About two days, just about as long as it took mum to figure it out too, because that's when she smacked him for leaving me on that beach." Rose smiled at the memory.

"As far as I'm concerned, Doctor, you're him, just without a few years of memories. I may call him by a different name, but he was still you. You're still the daft Time Lord who forgets to sleep when he needs to, and leaves socks where they shouldn't be," she nodded, eyebrows raised, to indicate the pair of black socks hanging on the railing of the circumferential walkway of the TARDIS. "And you are the man who sacrificed his own happiness, twice, to give me a future with you. First when you left me with John, and then when he spent his last years figuring out how to send me home to you."

She finished quietly, her voice a whisper. "Way I see it, John was still the man who took my hand and said 'run,' and you are still the man who gave me his name."


	17. Catching Up and Catching On

Rose rested her head on his chest and listened to the beating of his hearts, a smile on her lips. He stroked her hair absently and they rested content in each other's arms, like coming home after a very long trip.

"So," said Rose softly into the quiet room, "enough about me. What've you been up to?"

"Saving planets, annoying governments, running for my life. The usual," he said with not a trace of humility.

"Still with the running?"

"Always," he grinned. "You know you liked it."

She huffed a short laugh. "Yeah. I did. Have you been travelling… with anyone?" Rose asked carefully.

He shook his head, an inscrutable expression across his fine features. "No. Just me."

"You shouldn't travel alone. What about Donna? She was brilliant. I liked her."

His face fell, "He never told you, did he? He'd have known what would happen." Rose shook her head. "The metacrisis was dangerous for her. She still has a human brain, she couldn't keep a Time Lord consciousness in there. It would have burnt her to death. Like you with the Time Vortex. I had to lock away her memories. Everything to do with me, and she can never remember again."

Rose could hear the despair in his voice. John had referred to Donna as his best mate, and Rose knew the woman was special to him beyond measure, in a different way from Rose but no less. "I'm sorry," she said sadly. He squeezed her hand back, grateful for the contact.

He gave her a sad smile, an expression she returned, and met her eyes in a long look. It had been three years, for him, since they had had the opportunity for such contact. The last time he had seen her, it had been only a matter of hours they had spent together. It was not what he would term quality time, what with the Daleks, impending end of the universe, and the fact that he was duplicated in those few hours. Not much opportunity to relax together.

"What are you thinking?" she asked gently. "I can see wheels turning."

"Just remembering the last time we were together like this." He put his arms around her shoulder and she adjusted herself against his side, leaning her head against his shoulder.

"Ghostbusters," she remembered with a giggle. He began to hum the recognizable theme and Rose laughed heartily. "Oh God that was forever ago."

"You were so young then," the Doctor said wistfully, then his eyes went wide. "Not that I'm calling you old. Not at all. Definitely not calling you old. Nope."

Rose chuckled to herself and swatted his chest playfully with an open hand. "I know what you meant, you idiot."

"What are you going to do now?" the Doctor asked, unsure what he wanted to hear in response. He didn't dare hope, but at the same time he reminded himself that he did not have long himself.

"I don't know," Rose said honestly, shrugging. "We'd never really thought past getting here and finding you. Too afraid to dream, I guess. Or I just couldn't accept that it could be possible. But here we are and I have absolutely no idea what to do next."

"You're dead, officially, back on Earth, but I'm sure you could undo that without too much work and get some paperwork for Tony. Jack could probably fix you up easy enough. He has all sorts of contacts, not that I want to think about _why_ he knows so many people so well."

Rose giggled at the memory of the flirtatious reformed conman. "And go back to do what? Work in a shop? I don't even have my A levels here," she groaned at the thought. The better part of a decade in academic research and all her publications were in the wrong universe. "I don't know, I really don't. Tony needs some sort of stability, I think. He's a good kid, but he's never had the chance to be a normal child."

"He isn't, though, is he?" the Doctor asked in an odd voice. Rose looked at him enquiringly. "Normal. Human normal."

"No, he's not," she said quietly. "He's a right genius."

"He is," the man said. "Looked right into the Untempered Schism and came away from it with a headache."

Rose winced at the far too recent memory, the terror she'd felt on seeing him frozen in place before the swirling, violet gap in reality was still raw on her nerves. Anxiety bloomed within her chest as she deduced where this conversation was going and she braced herself.

"Rose, human children can't do that," said the Doctor quietly.

She sighed and closed her eyes a moment. "I know." Her voice was very soft in the large room.

He swallowed heavily and placed a hand at her chin, turning her face to look directly at him as he spoke. "Rose…" He drew in a deep breath. "Who are Tony's parents?"

"According to his birth certificate, Jacqueline and Peter Tyler."

"And according to his genes?" His hearts pounded in his chest, beating out a staccato note against the quiet that stretched too long.

Her eyes burned into his, all the answer he would need laid raw before him in her gaze. "Does it need saying?" She turned his own words of years before back on him.

Wordlessly, he rose from the jump seat and strode towards the corridor, his long legs carrying him quickly, his expression blank. It took him only a few seconds to find the worn, oak door that marked Rose's old bedroom. He pushed the door open a crack and peered in at the sleeping child.

Beneath the soft yellow duvet, Tony rested peacefully. Every few moments, he muttered quietly to himself, but his breaths were deep and steady, unoppressed by the weight of grief that had led him to cry himself to sleep. His pale blonde hair stuck up in many directions, twisted and mussed by the pillow.

The boy's eyes flickered beneath his eyelids as he dreamed. The Doctor stepped into the room as quietly as he could and gently placed a long-fingered hand on Tony's chest where it rose and fell steadily. Beneath his fingers and through the worn cotton of the sleeping child's shirt, he felt the unmistakable gallop of two hearts.

He didn't hear Rose come up behind him, but felt her hand on his shoulder. He turned to face her, a look of infinite tenderness and awe across his features. She put a finger to her lips and left the room quietly, leading him to the library. They walked silently toward the well-loved sanctuary of books where they had holed themselves up for so many days over their years together. The Doctor's mind was a torrent of thoughts whirling about, one chasing the other and none staying long enough to fully consider.

Rose sat down in her favourite soft, leather chair near the cold fireplace. He sat down opposite her, in his own matching chair. Rose pulled her knees up to her chest in a gesture he had seen her do a thousand times. She drew into herself when she was nervous.

Finally, after a moment staring off into nothing, she spoke. "He was born May twenty-sixth, two thousand and seven. It was eight months after we were separated, by that universe's calendar anyway. I don't know when it was for you. I was three months gone when you said goodbye that November."

"Why…" he croaked. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I was going to. When I mentioned the baby and you looked so happy and hopeful for just a second…" she returned, her eyes shadowed. "You had lost your world and your family already, and you told me travel between worlds was impossible. I just couldn't make it worse by telling you that you were going to lose someone else too." She shook her head sadly.

He drew his lips into a fine line. "Did John know?"

"He knew," Rose confirmed with a nod. "It was our first big fight when he found out since I didn't tell him right away. He loved Tony very much, and Tony loved him. They were inseparable whenever he spent time with us, which was a lot. Almost every weekend until John got really sick."

"Have you told Tony?" His voice was low and dark in the otherwise silent room.

She sighed. "I meant to. John wrote him this notebook like he did for me and I was supposed to give it to him for his tenth birthday, but I didn't."

"Why not?" his voice was laced with a quiet anger that simmered just below the surface.

"He just lost the only parents he ever knew. How could I go tell him that they'd lied to him his whole life? It would destroy him to be told that these people he was grieving weren't even who he thought they were. He's really strong, Doctor. He is amazing, he really is. But he has been through a lot. He has lost everyone he ever knew except for me. He's only just in the last few weeks started letting himself be happy again." She met his eyes, imploring him to understand. "He is a little boy who has lost everything. I can't take the memory of his parents away from him now."

The Doctor watched Rose carefully. She had unfolded her legs and sat rigidly now, her calmness from earlier gone. Her expression was tense as he took in what she said.

He had felt the boy's presence from the moment he landed on the planet. The faint wisp of awareness that he had once sensed of all Gallifreyan children and Time Lords alike; that tickle in the back of his mind that told him where to find the person who had called for his help. It had shocked him when he had entered Rose's TARDIS only hours earlier and realized the feeling originated from the boy.

It had shocked the Time Lord to the core when Tony had turned to look at him and the Doctor had seen a child who could have been his mirror image nine hundred years prior. Pale blonde hair, bright blue eyes, even the freckles across his nose. Long and lean and wiry. The child even smelled of Gallifrey; of spiced air and ancient earth.

Rose's confirmation of what he already knew in his hearts to be true left him reeling.

This woman, this incredible woman, had not only torn through universes to find him – _twice_ – she had restored his planet and brought him a son. He was not the last of his species any longer; there would be another, a son he could bring up to do the good he himself had always never quite managed. He felt the subtle poison of hope start to flow from his hearts but immediately ground it to dust.

This was a child with no idea of who he truly was which, perhaps, was for the best. With the destruction the Doctor had wrought, and with an axe hanging over his neck, it wouldn't do to hurt the child when he died.

Her voice broke into his morbid thoughts, seeming as though she was uncomfortable with his prolonged silence. "I don't regret leaving him with mum and Pete, you know. He had a good life, a better life than I could give him running around fighting aliens between classes, and it was the safest place for him. Especially with Torchwood being what it was."

The Doctor shot a skeptical look at Rose. "How was he safe from Torchwood being raised as the son of its director?"

"Keep your friends close and your enemies closer," Rose said simply, with a shrug. "There was no one, absolutely no one, in a better position to be able to keep Torchwood _away_ from Tony than Pete. Every decision went through him, every mission, every investigation."

"Is that why they came after him?" the Doctor asked, connecting dots in his mind.

She nodded sadly, her eyes hooded with anger at the betrayal. "I don't know how much they knew about Tony, but they knew that Pete was keeping something from them. It's how they got the president involved. Accused him of being corrupt, of hiding dangerous information. We knew it was possible this would happen; it's why John and I prepared an exit plan and why Tony and I didn't hide out on Earth. If Torchwood really knew what Tony is…"

Rose looked up and could see the rage of the Oncoming Storm in his eyes, clearly having come to the same conclusion.

"How did he never figure it out? Tony is bright; surely he noticed having two hearts before now."

At this, Rose actually smirked a bit proudly. "Ever hear of situs inversus totalis?"

The Doctor flashed her an offended look. "Organs completely flipped around the midline. Rare anatomical malformation in humans."

She nodded. "Strange things like that happen naturally from time to time within every species. Some people are born without certain organs, or with duplication of others. Two heads, sometimes, or complete duplication of limbs. Wasn't that hard to come up with a convincing explanation for congenital complex dicardia. That's his official diagnosis, by the way." Rose looked at him steadily. "The only Time Lord he knew only had one heart and there were no others. Me, mum, and John were the only people alive in that entire universe who knew that Time Lords had two hearts. We just never told anyone else. Tony believes he has a unique medical condition, that's all."

The Doctor nodded. "That's… creative."

"He asked about it when he was five. Had to come up with something."

"And what will you _come up with_ if he notices that I also have a binary circulatory system? I'm sure he's clever enough to draw some conclusions from that."

Rose inhaled at length and leaned back against the back of the chair. "Cross that bridge when I come to it, I guess. I do need to tell him eventually, and I'm not sure if it's better to wait for him to figure it out or tell him as soon as he's ready and get it over with, like ripping off a plaster. Too soon right now, though. Needs to wait until we're settled. Somewhere."

"What do you want to do, Rose?" the Doctor said quietly into the heavy air between them. He stood and began to pace. "Do you want to go back to Earth? I can take you both to Earth, and help you get settled there. Get Tony into school, get you a house. Maybe not the Powell Estate, eh? Think Tony'd like the Dragon School? Good name that, _Dragon_ School. Bit _Harry Potter_. You went to Oxford, you'd know the city."

She watched him carefully, seeing the way he'd shut himself off suddenly. Rose recognised his tendency towards avoidance. When he was uncomfortable, suddenly something else seemed very pressing. It was his way, but right now it was the absolute last thing Rose wanted to see him do. She couldn't help the hurt that settled in her at the thought that he would be so ready to see them off so soon after finding them.

"Can we stay with you?" Rose asked in a small voice. "At least for a while, if that's okay. Today was a very long day, and I can't really come up with a plan worth anything right now. I just need to collect my thoughts for a bit. I -" She broke off, letting out the remainder of what she had to say as a breath and gave him a half smile.

"That would be brilliant," he said happily, the tension unwinding from about his shoulders and his demeanour brightening instantly. He flashed her that grin, that all-teeth, face-cracking smile that was completely adorable and also made it hard to remember that he was nine hundred years old and one of the most dangerous and powerful beings alive. Rose loved that smile, and she had missed it like the earth misses the sun at night, and she couldn't help her own grin in response as he went on. "I'd love for you to stay. Both of you. As long as you like."

* * *

A/N: Situs inversus is a real anatomical malformation. It's really quite cool to see on a radiograph or MRI.

Complex congenital dicardia is completely made up, though. I did do a rough anatomical sketch of just how that binary circulation might work from a physiological point of view.


	18. Rather Like a Baby Bird

Rose lay stretched out on her front, head on her folded arms, as the suns high above warmed her skin. She had been immensely pleased to learn that her things were still in the TARDIS, all except what she wore the day she was sucked into the other dimension and the clothing she'd brought to mum for washing that day.

The woman was even more pleased to discover that her old clothes still fit after ten years. She supposed she could credit the months of stress, physical labour, and subsisting largely on survival rations for that. Rose had greeted her long-lost bikini like an old friend and now lay worshipping the suns of Gallifrey for their wonderful warmth.

She had not been so relaxed in many years. The gloriously warm air and the soft hiss of the waves meeting the shore lulled her into a near slumber as she let her mind drift lazily over the last few days, since they had successfully propelled themselves back to Rose's home universe.

The Doctor had decided to spend some time exploring this alternate Gallifrey, and Tony had not wasted a moment pestering the man to let him come along. Rose was glad of the reprieve; she had become accustomed to her solitude, and six months in the constant presence of a ten year old, no matter how much she loved him, had left her desiring some time to herself and a beautiful white sand beach beneath not one but two glorious suns was the ideal place for it.

This particular afternoon, Tony and the Doctor had been in the coral forest, taking measurements. The Doctor had been curious about how the TARDIS had managed to tow the planet through the Vortex and he'd wanted to take measurements. Tony, ever the little scientist himself, had whipped out his sonic screwdriver, bid goodbye to Rose, and left with the tall Time Lord.

Tony seemed to differentiate between the Doctor and John. As far as Rose could tell, he viewed them as two separate people instead of a continuation of a single man. Rose had to admit, in the privacy of her own thoughts that the Doctor had changed since she had last spent much time with him. He seemed darker, more troubled, than he had been when they had parted, almost like all of the gains he had made over the years she knew him had been lost. He was back to the scarred warrior, the man with the guilt of a lost world on his conscience. His eyes were older than she had ever seen them.

Her heart ached for him. He was, as always, reticent to talk of his experiences in the last year. Over their years together, John had told her of his adventures with Martha and Donna. Of Pompeii and freeing the Ood, of meeting Shakespeare – he'd rarely seemed so alive as when he talked of the Bard – and of the death of his oldest friend and fiercest enemy which left him the last repository in all of creation of his people's gathered wisdom.

She'd always known he had faced heartbreak of unimaginable proportions, but when he told her of Jenny, the daughter who died to save him, he had broken. He had already seen the passing of his firstborn son as well as his beloved granddaughter and first travelling companion, Susan, in the Time War, at the fall of Arcadia. John had told her these things in anger; revelations about the shadows of his past spat at her to make a point. Anger at her for refusing to consent to Tony being told the truth. She had remained firm in her position that the best, safest, and happiest life he could have would be with Pete and Jackie. John had eventually agreed, but their relationship had suffered a rift that left a deep scar.

No matter her words to John those years ago, she worried, and had always doubted, whether her decision was the right one.

 _Too late to go back now_ , she told herself.

Rose knew that Tony, clever as he was, would learn the truth sooner than she would like. While she had extracted the Doctor's grudging agreement, for now, to not give it away to Tony, Rose knew her days before that most uncomfortable conversation were numbered, especially now that he and the Doctor were together constantly.

She rolled lazily to her back and shielded her eyes from the suns with her forearm.

The last year, Rose reflected, had certainly been the hardest in her entire life. Learning to live without John, and then the loss of her mum and Pete. Even if their relationship had been strained, Pete was the closest she'd ever come to having a dad she could remember, and she had loved him and missed his presence in her life. And her mum, the fierce and protective mother who may have erred a bit too much on the side of being her friend, but who had still been the single most important person to her for the majority of her life.

Rose missed Gwen, the strong, brave, and incredibly funny woman who, despite being older than her own mum, was more like a sister. Erisa had been a fabulous coworker, but she'd not shared late evenings and too many bottles of wine with the Major the way she had with Gwen. She had expected to mourn those few connections she had made in the other universe, and today felt the strain of their loss, but she tried to focus on the fact that she was regaining so much by her return to this world.

For one, chips. She'd not been to Earth yet to have any, but they were just never the same in the other London. Rose had an unhealthy love of the deep fried potatoes, but a world without proper chips was scarce worth living in.

She made a mental note to ask the Doctor about a quick trip to Earth to visit her favourite chippy. Rose was not the least bit confident about navigating her own TARDIS yet and was more than a bit anxious about any attempts to travel to other worlds lest she and Tony and up before the big bang or something. Best to let the Doctor drive, awful as he was at it. She laughed to herself as she thought of the many, many times they'd found themselves off course.

Rose was just starting to consider the possibility of getting up when her entire body went ice cold.

She let out an ear piercing shriek and jumped to her feet. It took her eyes a moment to adjust and when they did, she saw a very amused ten year old with a bucket, and a nine hundred and six year old Time Lord a few feet behind him, doubling over in laughter.

"This is war!" she screamed. She lunged forward and grabbed Tony, hauling the tall, thin child over her shoulder as she made a beeline for the sea.

Struggling and flailing and laughing, Tony squealed and wriggled but he was unable to save himself from being thrown, clothes and all, into the slightly chilly water.

Rose turned to look back at the beach and saw the Doctor standing there, hands in the pockets of those pinstriped trousers, his posture radiating peace, smile wide and the corners of his eyes crinkled in happiness. He indicated with a nod that Rose should look behind her. She made to turn, but suddenly found herself falling forward into the salty, thigh-deep water with a ten year old on her shoulders.

"I win!" Tony proclaimed loudly as she surfaced.

Rose bent down and whispered quietly in his ear. "I'll make lava cakes for pudding if you can get the Doctor with a bucket of ice water between now and then."

"Consider it done," Tony whispered back with a mischievous wink.

Dripping wet and feeling chilled by the rising breeze, Rose was glad to get back to the beach but found her towel sopping wet. The Doctor stepped over to her and shrugged off his jacket, dropping it around her shoulders. She pushed her arms through the sleeves and flashed him a grateful smile. Tony ran ahead towards the coral forest, where both TARDISes remained parked. They'd seen no need to move them as the Doctor had said his own TARDIS seemed to be recharging her own energy simply by resting amongst her own kind.

She hooked the back straps of her sandals over her thumb and pulled her sunglasses down over her eyes from where they'd rested on the top of her head, glad they'd not fallen off in the water.

The Doctor extended his hand, smiling a bit shyly. His skin was soft as she slid her hand into his, a gesture both very familiar and very much missed. They swung their arms in time with their steps as they walked back towards the arching structures a half kilometre away down the beach.

"Find out anything interesting today?" she asked to break the silence.

"Oh yes," the Time Lord said, eyes lighting up with the excitement of discovery. "Your TARDIS, young thing that she is, networked with all of the other TARDIS coral. _All_ of it. There's a subterranean network of roots that acted almost like neurones and it seems they were all activated at the exact same moment. We popped over to the continent of Wild Endeavour, on the other side of the planet, and everything was recently activated there too. TARDISes can't travel on their own, not without linking with a Time Lord, but your little ship figured out how to turn all the coral everywhere on the planet into a clonal organism so it could travel together."

Rose turned her head to look at him skeptically over the top edge of her sunglasses. "A planet-sized clonal organism?"

"Yep," he said, grinning. "Magnificent, isn't it? Trapped up the whole planet _inside_ what was basically a single giant TARDIS."

"And since it's bigger on the inside, travelling through the Vortex with a planet wasn't any different than travelling through it with a single TARDIS," Rose finished, having put the pieces together fairly quickly.

"Got it in one," he said with a nod.

"Hold on a tick," said Rose, something he said earlier coming back to her, "you said they can't travel without linking with a Time Lord, but the TARDIS was travelling at my command. I could feel her in my mind."

"Not _precisely_ accurate," the Doctor began hesitantly.

Rose stopped, turning to face him completely. "Explain," she ordered, growing suspicion in her mind that she was not going to like what she was about to hear.

He cringed a bit as he responded, as if afraid of what Rose would said. "Well a TARDIS that hasn't been imprinted can't travel, and only Time Lords have the necessary biology, and there was only one nearby so she…"

"Linked with Tony," Rose interrupted.

"Yeah. His Artron signature is all over the TARDIS."

"My ten year old has a time machine," Rose concluded, feeling a bit queasy at the implications.

The Doctor ran his hand over the back of his neck. "Seems to be the case, yeah. I didn't tell him, don't worry, and I'm sure he thinks it was you. Still, I'm sure she won't let him do anything dangerous."

"Oh like that ever stopped you!" Rose said, rolling her eyes. "A ten year old version of _you_ – and don't pretend he isn't basically a smaller version of you because he _is_ – running around and he has his own bleeding telepathic time and space ship."

The Doctor pursed his lips in thought. "I think this might require some intervention on my part."

"You think?" Rose asked sarcastically.

* * *

As ever, the blue TARDIS had a well-stocked galley. Rose hadn't intended to completely move into the Doctor's TARDIS, but they'd returned from a walk to the berry bushes on the hill one day and found all of their belongings spat out on the ground and the younger TARDIS completely unwilling to open for them. The Doctor had suggested she might be remodeling now that she had a better idea of what a TARDIS could do, since he'd informed her that the telepathic fields of the two ships had overlapped since his arrival so they must be in contact.

Despite her understanding of the nature of her vows to John, which extended them to the Doctor, Rose had decided to stay in her old room for the time being, until she'd had some time to ease back into a life with him. With John's declining health, he'd not slept in the same room as her for a year and a half before he died as he had required a hospital bed. It had been hard for Rose to adapt to sleeping with Tony in the same room when they had gone on the run, and she had been glad to have her own space again once their TARDIS had provided them two bedrooms.

The Doctor had been very understanding of her need for some space and time for herself, after all she had been through. He seemed fairly wrapped up in getting to know the third inhabitant of his TARDIS, anyway.

Rose was chopping onions and listening carefully to the goings-on in the console room. The galley had located itself just inside the corridor entry from the console room this evening, and Rose could hear clearly what was being said. The Doctor was explaining to Tony how certain components of the TARDIS worked. She quirked an eyebrow any time he gave what could only be described as _driving tips_ , and made a note to talk to the Time Lord about that. This was not what she'd thought he meant when he said he'd do something about the fact that Tony had linked with a TARDIS in his own right.

She was pushing the onions off the cutting board into a frying pan on the thankfully very modern stovetop and added a pat of butter to sauté them when Tony came striding in.

"Best get started on those lava cakes, Rose," he said confidently.

"Ah ah, I need proof," she said without looking up.

A moment later, a loud, surprised shout and a splash echoed down the corridor from the console room.

"TONYYYYY!"


	19. Bad Dreams

Rose had been sleeping soundly in her gloriously comfortable bed when she heard a shriek of terror. She shot up and ran for Tony's nearby bedroom, clad only in the very long t-shirt she used as a nightshirt. It took her only a few steps to find the simple door that opened into a small, plain bedroom that TARDIS had marked as the boy's.

She pushed the door open and looked around, eyes wide, and saw Tony sitting bolt upright in bed, eyes wide. "Are you alright? What happened?" she asked as her heart thumped loudly.

"What happened?" asked the Doctor redundantly as he came rushing in, dressed as usual in his suit and chucks.

"There was a face," Tony said, his voice coloured with fear. "Laughing like mad. And this sound…" The boy clapped out four rapid notes with his hands. The Doctor's eyes went wide. "Something about it felt very, very bad but I don't know why." His mouth formed a moue of distaste and his eyes seemed very confused.

It wasn't the first time Tony had had bad dreams, in fact until the past month or two, he had them more often than not and had rarely slept a full night undisturbed. But this was new. Rose had soothed him back to sleep many nights after he'd woken from nightmares of Pete or Jackie dying, or of them being found by Torchwood or hurt by some of the aliens they had met in their travels. This particular dream was new.

"Do you think you can get back to sleep now?" the Doctor asked. His expression had a dark cast to it, but he spoke softly to the child.

Tony frowned and nodded. "I think so. It's gone now. Don't even remember what I –" he was cut off by a yawn and lay back down. Rose reached over and pulled his blanket back up over him.

"Sleep well, Tony. I'm just across the corridor if you need me, okay?"

"'Kay," he said quietly, his disturbed sleep rising to claim him again. His eyes dropped closed. "Night Rose, Doctor," he muttered.

"Goodnight, Tony," Rose said, leaning down to plant a kiss on his brow.

"Sleep well," said the Doctor. Rose followed him out a moment later and closed the door behind her.

"What is it?" she asked, noting his troubled look.

The Doctor led her down the corridor a bit, to get away from Tony's door. "That sound," he clapped his hands together in the same four beat pattern Tony had made. "This is very important, Rose. What does Tony know about the Master?"

"Almost nothing as far as I know," she said, shrugging. "John didn't like to talk about him. I don't think he ever told Tony about him."

The Time Lord repeated the clapped notes. "This is a signal. It's a sound the Master used when he took over the Earth. That year that we reversed. Do you know about that?"

"Yes, John told me," Rose said sadly, remembering his despair at how much suffering had come to those at the centre of the storm.

"There is no reason Tony should know that sound," he said fiercely, running his fingers through the controlled chaos of his hair. "There's no reason anyone should know it, at least no one besides the handful of us who were there. The Master is dead, I burnt his body myself."

Rose put a comforting hand on his upper arm. "We'll figure it out, yeah? There's got to be an explanation." She stifled a yawn. "How about we figure it out in the morning? I'm knackered."

"Alright," said the Doctor. "I'll see you in the morning." He hesitated a moment before he made to turn, but Rose stopped him. She stood on the tips of her toes and pressed a soft kiss to his cheek.

"Goodnight," she said, covering her mouth with a hand as she yawned.

"Goodnight, Rose Tyler," said the Doctor with a gentle smile. "I'll see you in the morning." He turned and walked down the corridor back towards the console room where he had been upgrading some of the navigational circuitry, but there was no sound of footsteps from Rose returning to her room.

"Doctor?" she asked softly. He froze. "Have you slept at all since you got here?"

"No, no I haven't," the Doctor said, turning back. Rose walked towards him and reached out to take his hand. He looked from their joined hands to her face with a raised eyebrow.

"You need to sleep, then, come on."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, and right now I'm tired and you're tired and I have a warm bed and you're here so come on."

She smiled, and turned to go back the way she had come earlier. She tugged him along behind her and pulled him into her room. Rose crawled back into her covers and pulled them back, inviting him.

He quickly toed off his shoes, removed his jacket, and stepped out of his trousers, draping his suit over Rose's desk chair. He slid into the bed beside her and she curled into his arms with a sigh. He signalled to the TARDIS to turn off the lights and the room fell into darkness.

"I have missed you," Rose said into the night.

He placed a soft kiss on her temple. "I've missed you too, you brilliant woman."

"And as much as I want to hear you say nice things about me, I am _really_ tired. Goodnight, Doctor."

"Goodnight, Rose."

Within minutes, she was asleep, and he felt himself drifting off with the once-familiar, and very much missed, comforting weight of Rose Tyler in his arms once more.

They'd not been asleep long when Rose startled awake, knocking him out of his own sleep.

"Doctor," she said quietly. "Doctor, I think I just had Tony's nightmare."

"What?" he asked. "What d'you mean?"

Despite the disquiet in her mind at the memory of the dream, Rose found his sleep-mumbled voice adorable. "There was this face, and that rhythm. Just like Tony said."

"Hm. Do you remember the face?"

Rose frowned, trying to pull the memory back, but it fell between her fingers like sand. "No. But it felt wrong. Like I should be afraid of it. That sound," she tapped out the rhythm on his arm. "Just felt… ominous. It's hard to describe."

"Something must be transmitting telepathically if you're getting it too," he mumbled. "I'll look into it in the morning." He pulled her against him again. "Right now, I am having a very pleasant dream that I'm in bed with the beautiful Rose Tyler and I sort of want to keep that one going."

Rose giggled in the dark room and settled into his arms again. "Well, then, sweet dreams, Doctor."

"Mmm," he mumbled, squeezing her as he settled back into sleep.

* * *

"Well, there was definitely some sort of telepathic interference last night," the Doctor said, scanning the monitor above the console. "Pretty diffuse origin, though. I can't seem to pinpoint it. It's like it's coming from everywhere."

"Have you seen anything like this before?" Rose asked, looking at the incomprehensible swirling Gallifreyan script over his shoulder.

He shook his head and pushed his spectacles a bit further up his nose. "No, I haven't, and I don't like it. The TARDIS should shield you from any harmful telepathic communication while we're inside, do I doubt it'll hurt you, but I don't like that it's connected to the Master."

"Reckon I'd like to stay well away from him after what you've told me about him." Rose shuddered.

Tony, who had been outside collecting his favourite fruit – the orange berries that the Doctor had informed them were named ressifruit – popped his head into the TARDIS. "Hey Doctor, there's someone here to see you."

The Doctor looked up at Tony quizzically. "Someone _here?_ "

Tony shrugged. "He said he's here with a message for you. Out on the beach. Blue suit, pink skin, face full of tentacles…"

"An Ood?" Rose asked, face breaking in a smile. "How on Earth could an Ood get here?"

"That is a very good question," the Doctor said. After his last visit from Ood Sigma, he was not in a particular hurry to meet up with the noble, but strange, creatures so soon. "You stay here Rose, Tony."

"Fat chance," Rose snorted.

The Doctor strode quickly out of his TARDIS, Rose at his side. Tony followed behind as they walked to the beach where none other than Ood Sigma himself stood, translator in hand. The boy hung back a bit, watching from a distance.

"You have delayed too long,"

"I'm in no hurry for my song to end, thanks," he replied seriously. "Still have plenty to do, me." He took Rose's hand.

"You will come with me."

"Hold on, don't I get a say in this?"

"The Mind of the Ood is troubled and beckons you. You will come with me to the Ood Sphere, one hundred years after we last met." The Ood replaced his translator and vanished from the beach.

"There is no way he should be able to do that," the Doctor said pensively. "Reach back hundreds of years to talk to me." Rose watched the spot where the Ood had been moments before with a scowl on her face.

"What do you think it's about?" Tony asked.

"No better way to find out than to go. Back to the TARDIS, then." He turned to walk back the way they came.

"Wait, Doctor," Rose said, not letting go of his hand but also not turning to walk after him. His momentum and their still-joined hands caused him to turn back to her quickly. Her eyes were troubled as she met his. "What did you mean? Your song ending?"

"Later," he said softly. "Let's just get back to the TARDIS and figure out what is going on here."

Rose, realizing that she would get nothing more out of him until the mysterious Ood's presence was explained turned with a sigh and followed him.

It took them only a few minutes to reach the clearing where the TARDISes were parked. Tony stood outside the younger of the two, hand on the door, face scrunched up in concentration. "She still won't open," he said sadly.

"No matter," the Doctor said, coming up behind him and setting a hand on the boy's shoulder. "We'll travel in mine. She knows the way already, anyway. Less chance of going off-course that way."

"But still a _very good_ chance of going off course because this idiot's driving," Rose teased.

"Oi!"

Tony laughed at the pair of them. Together, they piled into the blue police box. "It feels wrong to leave her here, though," Tony said.

"I know," Rose said. "But we'll be back. Right?"

"Oh of course," the Doctor assured as he started inputting coordinates into the TARDIS' navigational system. "This is my home planet! Now that I've got it back, I'll never leave for good." He smiled broadly at Tony. He waved the boy over towards the console.

"Now, take that handle there, no not that one," he said as Tony pointed to one of the many such handles on the console. "Not that one either. Yep, that one. Okay, when I say go, you swing that hard as you like, alright?"

Tony nodded and looked proudly at Rose, his hand on the TARDIS' console, the ship humming happily at the contact. She looked over at the Doctor, eyebrows raised and he shot her back a goofy smile, puffing up his chest a bit in pride at the interaction of the boy with his ship.

Rose shook her head, amused, and watched the Doctor twirl about the console, hitting buttons and flicking switches in a long-practiced choreography that she hadn't witnessed for many years. She couldn't help smiling as she watched his grin grow wider.

"Alright Tony, into the Vortex. Go!"

Tony pulled the handle, hard, and shouted in time with the Doctor "Allons-y!" They turned and grinned at each other while Rose dissolved into giggles at the perfectly matching gleeful expressions on their faces.


	20. The Celestial Mind

This story will be complete in 28-29 chapters with an epilogue. I've written everything but the epilogue, and am still just tweaking the last little bits.

The next few chapters, out of necessity, borrow heavily from The End of Time (parts 1 and 2.) I am changing some things up, but there will be areas where I re-use dialogue or have to take scenes in a similar way. Should go without saying that none of that belongs to me. I'm going to try to tell the story differently so it's not a scene-by-scene replay of the episodes like rewrites usually are, but there will, naturally, be some similarities. Like the bit you see in this chapter.

'-

Rose had missed snow. It snowed in Pete's world even less often than it had in her original London, and it had been at least two years since she had last experienced it, and Tony had seen snow only a handful of times in his ten years.

As she stepped out of the TARDIS, bundled in her favourite thick, blue peacoat with a chunky white woolen hat over her hair, she twirled gleefully in the fat, fluffy flakes falling softly to the ground around her. The snow crunched magnificently under her boots and Rose looked to the Doctor with a wide grin, tongue poking out from between her teeth, her eyes shining in the bright light of the sun.

He smiled back at Rose, hands in the pockets of his long, swishy coat. With a soft _thwump_ a snowball exploded on his chest. Rose turned to look at the fleeing Tony who was dashing off wildly in the opposite direction, giggling madly.

"Oh it's on," the Doctor said, a glint in his eyes. He reached down and scooped up some snow, forming it into a ball as he tore off after the boy, long legs carrying him over swaths of ground with each step.

Rose bent down to retrieve some snow of her own, enough for two snowballs, and stepped in front of the TARDIS to conceal herself from their view. She waited patiently, listening.

A moment later, the laughing Tony came running up from behind the TARDIS and Rose aimed true, hitting the child on his shoulder. He stopped and turned, throwing her an utterly betrayed look as he brushed some of the scattered snow from his hair. She smirked. The Doctor's unmistakeable footsteps on the newfallen snow were approaching around the other side of the TARDIS so Rose dodged quickly when she heard him. He lunged for thin air and Rose swung around, shoving the snowball down the back of his suit before he'd regained his footing.

"Now that's not fair!" the Time Lord exclaimed, shaking the snow out of his suit.

Rose crossed her arms across her chest and arched an eyebrow. "Just because I won doesn't mean it wasn't fair."

"I don't disagree by any means, I was just saying that to distract you." He flashed Rose a victorious grin at the same moment a large snowball collided with the back of her head.

"You will come with me," said Ood Sigma, who none of them had seen approach.

The Doctor shook the last of the snow out of his coat and took Rose's hand. Tony made a mock gagging noise behind them and Rose turned to stick her tongue out at the boy.

They crested a hill and Rose looked with awe at what appeared to be a city grown from living rock. Ood walked here and there over arched bridges of snow-covered grey stone.

"That's magnificent!" the Doctor exclaimed. "You've achieved this in only a hundred years? Or did I show up late?"

"Wouldn't be the first time," Rose muttered. The Doctor shoved her playfully with his shoulder. "He's good at that."

"It has been one hundred years," the Ood confirmed.

"Then we've got a problem. 'Cos all this is way too fast. Not just this, your ability to call me, all the way back in the twenty first century." He frowned. "Something is accelerating your species way beyond normal."

"And the Mind of the Ood is troubled," Ood Sigma was saying as they walked. "Every night, Doctor, every night we have bad dreams."

Ood Sigma led them down a long path. Rose looked around as they walked. The Doctor appeared lost in thought, and Tony's eyes were wide, taking in the frosty world. It was only a few minutes before they arrived at a cavern from which a warm wind blew.

They walked through the shadowy cave, beneath high ceilings from which stalactites dripped like stone spears. Tony crowded closer to her, his face kept carefully neutral, but she could hear his increased breathing rate. They approached a bubble of warm orange light within the cavern, and Rose felt the air around her warm considerably the closer they came.

"They will stay, they will stay, they will stay," chanted a dozen identical voices.

Ood sigma turned to Rose and Tony and raised a hand. "You will stay here," he ordered. Rose made to object, but the Doctor's expression cut her off. He continued on with the blue-clad Ood.

There was a low stone bench nearby so she took a seat, waving Tony down beside her. He plopped down heavily beside her, looking a bit disgruntled himself at being left behind. It was hardly the first time she'd been sidelined on an adventure, and Rose suspected strongly it would not be the last.

"The Ood are telepathic," Rose told Tony. "Except for Ood Sigma, with that ball thing, none of them are actually talking. You're hearing it in your head." She tapped his forehead and smiled.

"I think I can tell," Tony said. "It's more like feeling than hearing."

Rose nodded, impressed. "Took me a long time to get used to it. My first trip with the Doctor, I met the Face of Boe. First time anyone talked to me telepathically and I didn't even realize it."

"Can I talk back to them that way?"

She shrugged, honestly not knowing the answer. "Maybe. Some people are more telepathic than others. I'm not, not at all. I can only talk to the TARDIS because of Bad Wolf. Torchwood tried really hard to train me and I was pants at it." She suspected the boy was telepathic, since it seemed to be the norm among the Doctor's people, but she had no way to be sure.

Tony nodded absently and closed his eyes, seemingly trying to listen.

She heard the Doctor explaining to the Ood about the Master's wife.

Tony's eyes flew open a moment later. "I saw that!" he said, surprised. "When the Doctor showed them. That's the man in my dreams. The Master."

"That's what I was afraid of," Rose sighed. "Now hush, I'm trying to eavesdrop." Tony flashed her a conspiratorial grin and closed his eyes again, clearly intended to attempt to eavesdrop telepathically.

The voice of the Ood Elder rang even in Rose's head, and she made no concerted effort to open her mind to their telepathy. "….But something more is happening, Doctor. The Master is part of a greater design, because a shadow is falling over creation. Something vast is stirring in the dark. The Ood have gained this power to see through time, because time is bleeding. Shapes of things once lost are moving through the veil, and these events from years ago threaten to destroy this future, and the present, and the past."

After a moment, they heard the assembled Ood chorus "The end of time itself."

The Doctor came running back towards them. "Now, we are going NOW. Tony, Rose, come on!"

They rose from the stone bench and took off after the fleeing Time Lord, out into the snow, and up the well-trod path, and back down the hill to where the TARDIS rested.

The Doctor ran frantically around the console, setting their destination. "Tony, hit those buttons there top to bottom. Rose, pull out this lever after Tony's done." He moved them both into position with hands on their shoulders.

"Doctor, where are we going?"

With a determined glint in his eyes, he said "Earth" and pulled a lever, throwing them into the Vortex.

* * *

"Rose, Tony, stay in here. Do not, I repeat, do _not_ follow me this time. Just don't." Rose opened her mouth to object, but the Doctor placed a finger on her lips, giving her a fierce look. "Not this time. Please just stay here, Rose. I won't be long"

She huffed, crossing her arms over her chest. "Fine."

"Tony, make sure she stays here, eh?" the Doctor said with a wink at the boy.

On impulse, he leaned over and kissed Rose on the cheek before he turned and strode out the doors. He stalked out to the edge of the hill of rubble in the dockyards on which he had landed the TARDIS.

He inhaled deeply and let his mind rove over the collected scents. The salty spray of the Atlantic, alive with algae. Earth and rock and distant snow. The smell of exhaust and metal, filth, and construction. He drew the air deep into his lungs, and his eyes snapped open as he caught the very faintest scent of his foe. He turned to look in the direction it originated and his sensitive ears heard though the storm of sensory input; _clang, clang, clang, clang._

The rubber soles of his runners slapped the ground as he took off at a charge, his legs blurring beneath him as he consumes ground. The burn in his lungs gave way as his respiratory compensation kicked in and he felt more oxygen flood his blood. Hearts pumped in a galloping synchronicity, propelling him further.

Across a desolate yard, he saw the Master. No longer in his fine suit, he stood dressed in a ragged hooded sweatshirt and torn jeans, but his face had not changed, he still looked like the Harold Saxon he had been, clearly deranged even from a distance. The platinum-haired Time Lord screamed and leaped high into the air, bounding away. The Doctor's feet pounded the Earth below him as he gave chase once more, stopping as he came face to face with the Master, only a few metres away.

His skin flashed translucent and for a moment he looked almost like a radiograph.

"Please, let me help!" he called across the yard full of construction materials. "You're burning up your own life force!"

He laughs and runs off. The Doctor made to follow him, but as he rounded a pile of girders, he had to slow to avoid running into one Wilfred Mott.

"Oh my god, Doctor! You're a sight for sore eyes"

"Out of my way!" the Doctor shouted. He raised himself over the metal I-beams and looked around, but the Master was no longer visible. Behind him he heard people gathering and voices began to chatter.

"Did we do it? Is that him?"With a frustrated sigh, he dropped to the ground and turned to see a white-haired woman clad in a bright red coat talking quickly. "The Silver Cloak. It worked. Because Wilf phoned Netty, who phoned June, and her sister lives opposite Broadfell, and she saw the police box, and her neighbour saw this man heading east." She finished, nodded to herself in satisfaction.

He spoke quietly and urgently to Wilfred as an aside. "Wilfred, have you told them who I am? You promised me…"

"No, I just said you were a doctor, that's all," he said defensively. "And might I say, sir, it is an honour to see you again." He finished with a quick salute.

The woman in red pushed between them. "Oh but you never said he was a looker. He's _gorgeous._ Take a photo!"

"Not bad, eh?" one of the men said outrageously. "Me next."

"I'm Minnie, Minnie the Menace. It's a long time since I had a photo with a _handsome_ man," she simpered, inserting herself at his side under his arm.

"Could you just get off him? Leave him alone," Wilf grumbled.

"Hush you old misery," Minnie chided. "Come on Doctor, give us a smile. That's it." The assembled group all turned to the man with the camera.

There was a soft click. "Hold on, did it flash?"

Mini shook her head. "No, there's a blue light. Try again!"

"I'm all fingers and thumbs," the cameraman said helplessly.

The Doctor tried to pull away from the group of elderly sleuths. "I'm really kind of busy, you know."

"Oh it won't take a tick, keep smiling," Minnie urged, pulling herself back to his side.

The Doctor jumped forward. "Is that your _hand_ , Minnie?"

"Good boy," she purred, patting his bum.

Photo taken, the group dispersed. Wilf hung back a moment.

"I've been looking for you," he said.

"I gathered that, yeah," the Doctor said, eyes roving the derelict construction site.

He looked at the Doctor seriously. "Come to tea with me, we need to talk."

"Just hang on," he said. He pulled a mobile out of his pocket and hit a button, raising it to his ear. "Yeah, it's me... What do you mean?... Yes I have a mobile. Martha gave it to me, remember?... No. Well yes, but no…. Yeah, not far. Just head, towards the cranes… Yeah… See you soon."

He closed the phone and returned it to his coat pocket.

"So you're travelling with someone, then?"

The Doctor smiled genuinely. "Yeah. Two, actually. They'll be here in a minute. Just parked a bit away."

"Good, you shouldn't be alone," Wilfred said with a nod to himself.

"Why does everyone keep saying that?" the Time Lord asked, a bit annoyed.

Wilfred shrugged. "Because it's true. You're a special kind of man, Doctor. The sort who's never quite complete all on his own."

They lapsed into silence and the Doctor rocked back and forth on his heels, hands in his pockets. Wilfred looked around at the construction site, the piles of rubble and metal and wire.

The Doctor heard footsteps approaching and smiled as he saw Rose and Tony come 'round the pile of rusted metal beams.

"Hello again, sweetheart!" cried Wilfred happily, opening his arms to greet Rose with a hug.

She laughed happily and embraced the older man. "Hullo Wilfred!"

The Doctor looked at them, confused. "You two know each other?"

"I met Wilf here when I was looking for you last time," Rose smiled as Wilfred released her.

Wilfred smiled back at Rose, his face brightened considerably. "So you found him then?"

"She's good at that," the Doctor said, unable to stop the wide, fond smile that came over his features.

"And I'm Tony, nice to meet you sir," the boy said, extending his hand in greeting.

"Nice to meet you, young Tony," Wilfred smiled, taking his hand in a firm shake. "How'd you get mixed up with this pair then. eh?"

Tony shuffled his feet on the graveled ground. "Nothing better to do." His eyes were sad, but he offered no further explanation.

The Doctor reached over and ruffled the boy's hair and turned back to Wilfred "So you said we needed to talk?"


	21. Wasteland

Wilfred Mott led the Doctor, Rose, and Tony back to the minibus full of the _very_ talkative friends he had used to seek out the Doctor.

Minnie, the flirtatious and outrageous woman in red, gushed sweetness the moment she saw Tony.

"So who is this young man then, eh?" she said fondly when he took a seat opposite her. Rose and the Doctor sat in the seats behind him.

"Tony, ma'am. Nice to meet you." He extended his hand and she took it, looking impressed at his manners. "That's my sister," he nodded to Rose. "And I guess he's my brother-in-law. I live with them."

"You're _married?"_ Minnie asked the Doctor, scandalized.

He exchanged a look with Rose, who leaned against him rather possessively so he could put his arm around her shoulders. "Yes, this is my wife, Rose."

Rose smiled pleasantly at the woman, shooting a small surprised look up at the Doctor. It was the first time the Doctor had called her his wife and she was immensely pleased to hear him say the words.

"Now Tony, how are you enjoying school this year?" Minnie asked in a decidedly grandmotherly voice.

"I'm homeschooled," he told the woman. "We travel a lot, so I get to learn all over the place." Rose was impressed with his ability to spin a believable story so quickly. Her mind drifted a bit as Tony and the woman made small talk and the Doctor chatted with Wilfred. She let her eyes wander over the familiar London sights the minibus drove past.

In truth, Tony's education had fallen a bit by the wayside since they had arrived on Gallifrey. Rose felt a pang of regret at the fact. Tony had worked through all of the academic material she had brought for him, and he was well past what he would need to know for his A-levels, so she had given him some of the texts she had packed from her uni days.

Even though she'd pursued a degree in physics, she'd had to take courses in all of the pure sciences and many maths courses. While Rose was bright and found that as she stretched the once disused muscle of her mind on a more regular basis she was able to make sense of fairly complex concepts, but she did not have the innate and instant grasp of every subject the way Tony did. Rose had forced herself through pure and discrete maths by sheer force of will, and she was still intimidated by organic chemistry. Tony, however, seemed almost bored with the ease with which he'd picked them up.

After a while, Wilf asked the driver to stop. He left the bus, the three travellers in tow, and ushered them into a small café.

"Why this café and not one of the other fifteen we passed, Wilfred?"

"I just like this one," he said, holding the door open.

Before long, they sat around a low table in the trendy-coloured, squashy leather chairs Tony had pulled them to. Rose sipped a latte; she'd not had proper one for a desperately long time and had missed the milky beverage.

"Now, just who _are_ you?" the Doctor asked, looking at Wilf seriously, lips pursed.

The older man looked confused. "I'm Wilfred Mott."

"No, Wilf, who are you that you could find me? People have waited hundreds of years to find me, but you managed it in a few hours." His voice was troubled.

"Just lucky, I suppose," Wilfred said simply.

The Doctor took a sip of his tea then let out a long breath. He turned to Tony. "Think you might like to pop over to the bookshop next door? For say, oh, ten minutes?"

Tony took the hint easily enough. "Sure. Can I have ten quid?" he asked with a grin. "Might find something I want."

The Doctor, who rarely carried cash of any sort, actually did have ten pounds somewhere in one of his pockets this day. He reached deeply into his jacket pocket, far more deeply than his arm should be able to reach and, after a moment, extracted the note and handed it to Tony. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do," he cautioned.

"Oh yeah, like that rules out much," Tony said as he walked away, shoving the money in his pocket.

"Be good!" Rose called to the retreating back of the boy.

He raised his hand in acknowledgement as he left the café and turned left towards the bookshop.

"I don't know why I keep meeting you, Wilfred," he began. Changing his mind, he got to the meat of the matter. "Everything keeps pointing to you, and there's one message I hear every time. That I'm going to die."

"No," Rose said softly, reaching over and taking his hand. "No you're not."

"I thought you could change. When I saw you before, you said your people could change, like, your whole body."

"I can still die," he said sombrely. Rose looked sideways to meet his eyes, pain in her own. "If I'm killed before regeneration, then I'm dead. Even then, even if I change, it still feels like dying. Everything I am dies. Some new man goes sauntering away, and I'm dead."

"Then we won't let that happen," Wilf said certainly.

"I'm with him," Rose agreed.

"Why do you think you're going to die, anyway?" the old soldier asked. "Did you go ahead in time and look yourself up?"

The Doctor shook his head. With an almost apologetic look at Rose, he explained. "Can't do that, jumping around in my own timeline. There's been a prophecy. That I'll die. He will knock four times, that's what it said. Knock four times and then…" His voice trailed off, leaving the remainder unsaid.

"Is that Donna?" Rose asked, looking out the window. The Doctor looked out and frowned and turned back to Wilfred, feeling rather manipulated.

"I'm sorry, but I had to try," he said, putting his hands up in his defense. "Can't you make her better? Bring back her memory?"

"Stop it," he said to Wilf.

"But you're so clever – can't you bring her memory back? Look, just go to her. Go on, just run across the street and say hello." The man's voice was very sad and pleading.

The Doctor's voice was firm as he replied. "If she ever remembers me, her mind will burn and she will die. I can't Wilf, I'm sorry." He felt the familiar sorrow well up in his chest.

"Who's that now?" Rose ask Wilf.

He turned, looked at the man who had stepped up beside Donna. "Shaun Temple, her fiancé. Getting married in the spring."

"Another wedding," the Doctor said, a bit amazed. Rose grinned at him, recalling the memory of what John had told her about meeting Donna the first time. "Hold on, she's not going to be called Noble-Temple, is she? That sounds like a tourist spot." Rose laughed softly at that.

"No," Wilf said, holding himself a bit more erect. "It's Temple-Noble."

The Doctor sighed. "Right. Is she happy, though? Is he nice?"

"Yeah, he's sweet enough," the man said a bit grudgingly. "Bit of a dreamer. And they've not got tuppence between them so all they have is this tiny little flat." His voice grew a bit distant. "And then sometimes… sometimes I see this look on her face, like she's so sad and she just can't remember why."

"She looks happy with him," Rose observed. "Big old smile like that."

"Could say the same about you, my girl," Wilf told Rose. "The pair of you, happy as you like, and I think I heard you say you're married! When did that happen?"

Rose and the Doctor exchanged a look. "There's a rather complicated answer to that," Rose said, smiling.

"Well congratulations, you two. You deserve it, after what you did saving the universe like that."

"Oh that was nothing," the Doctor said with false humility. Rose poked his upper arm and scowled at him playfully. "What?"

"We'd better be going to fetch Tony." Rose redirected the conversation.

"Yes. Unless there was something else?" the Doctor said, moving to stand from the seat.

"Yes," Wilf said, stopping them with a raised hand. His eyes were dark as he told the Doctor. "We've been having bad dreams. All of us. Dreams we can't remember, but it's all of us. There's something bad going on, Doctor. Something serious, and I needed to make sure you knew."

"Thank you, Wilfred." He stood and lifted Rose's coat off the back of her chair. He held it open for her before reaching for his own familiar, long coat.

"It was lovely to see you again, Wilf," Rose said, bending to place a friendly peck on the gruff old man's cheek. "Thank you for all your help last time. I never said."

"No trouble, my dear. Don't stay away so long next time, eh?"

"Of course not," the Doctor said, taking Rose's arm in his as they left the small, warm café.

The bookshop's entry door was just a few metres down the sidewalk from the café. As soon as the Doctor entered it, he smiled. It felt very much like his library; dark wood shelves, tables placed haphazardly, piled with books, and perfectly soft leather chairs for reading in. A man was running his hand down the spines of various books on one of the shelves, clearly reading their titles.

Tony was seated in one of the leather chairs at the higher, back section of the shop, a thin, blue, leather-bound volume in his hands.

"Macbeth," Rose read the title as they approached. "Bit deep for a ten year old."

"Oh but it's bloody magnificent,"

"Oi, don't swear," the Doctor chided him, coming up behind Rose.

"Sorry. But it is fantastic. Listen to this," he puffed out his chest and sat straighter in the chair, holding the book before him with one hand and read in his best attempt at stage projection. He stumbled over some of the words as he recited " _The earth hath bubbles, as the water has, And these are of them. Whither are they vanish'd?"_

The Doctor responded in a highland burr, " _Into the air; and what seem'd corporal melted, As breath into the wind…_ "

Tony grinned at him. "Do you know them all?"

"Oh yes. I may even have inspired some of them. Well, one of them. Well, a character. Or two." said the Time Lord, preening a bit.

"Okay, let me try…" He picked up one of the other nearby tomes and lifted it. He flipped to a page at random and ran his fingers down the text, eyes scanning it rapidly. " _Where is but a humour or a worm_."

The Doctor smiled broadly and replied without a missed beat, " _Well, everyone can master a grief but he that has it_."

"Congratulations, you're both brilliant," Rose said teasingly. "Did you want to get a book, Tony?"

He reached for the leather copy of Macbeth. "Don't bother, I've got a copy signed by the Bard himself in the TARDIS library."

"The TARDIS has a _library_?" Tony asked, eyes wide.

"Of _course_ it does. Any proper time machine needs its own library," replied the Doctor as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"Well, then, this can be the first book for the library in the new TARDIS." He picked up the book and walked to the cash to join the queue – it was nearly Christmas here, after all – the Doctor and Rose a few steps behind.

"You'll never get him out of the library now you've told him about it," Rose said, smiling. "He's a voracious reader."

"Good, because he's going to have a lot of reading to do."

"What do you mean?" She stopped, pulling him out of the main aisle, between a pair of tall book cases.

The Doctor looked at her, a bit confused. "Well, he needs an education, a proper Time Lord one I mean, and the Academy is long gone so I might as well teach him. He's two years behind already, not that it'll be hard for him to catch that up in no time"

Her jaw went slack and her eyes narrowed. "Don't you think you should have talked to me about this first?"

"It's occurring to me now that I might have done, yeah," he said, running a hand over the back of his neck in a nervous gesture. "Let's revisit this at a better time, eh?"

"Definitely," Rose said. "Don't imagine I'll forget."

"Oh, I wouldn't dare hope."

"Watch it."

They walked towards the front of the shop to wait for Tony when something caught his eye. The Doctor stopped and turned to a small display of books. _Fighting the Future,_ said the bold title. A tall, well-dressed black man stood on the cover, looking powerful.

"Joshua Naismith," he read the author's name aloud. "That man, I know that man. The Ood showed me. He's connected to all of this somehow."

Rose picked up a copy of the book and turned. "Well, let's pick this up and get back to the TARDIS. Looks like we have some homework to do, eh?"

She reached into the pocket of her coat and was glad to find that, after having last worn it on Earth years ago and left it in the TARDIS during her years away, it still contained some pound notes. She handed the book to Tony along with the notes.

A short few minutes later, the three travelers stepped out onto the streets of London. Tony carried the small plastic bag from the bookshop and walked ahead. The Doctor took Rose's hand and they strolled along behind the boy, swinging their arms between them.

* * *

That evening, Rose and Tony were ensconced in the TARDIS library while the Doctor ran out to do something that he refused to tell them about. Tony had been struck silent in awe when he entered the room for the first time. Case upon case of books lined the walls of the room over two levels, and there were long, tall bookcases in a dozen rows resting in the middle of the floor of the first level. Near the fireplace was positioned a cluster of deep brown, studded leather chairs, a matching sofa facing the hearth, and a collection of small tables suitable for cups of tea, here and there. Desks from a dozen different eras were scattered here and there throughout the room, many of them stacked high with books. There were piles of bound tomes in a thousand colours and various on the floor beside bookcases and under desks.

The library was a bibliophile's dream, and Rose remembered her own reaction when she had first entered it. She hadn't been much of a reader, then, but had felt so at home in the warm room, with its hovering atmosphere of knowledge waiting to be breathed in like the scent of old paper and binding glue. She and the Doctor had spent many of their most memorable evenings in here, and Rose had fallen in love with the written word as much as she had the man who often read poems and plays to her, his theatrical nature bringing them to life before her.

Tony hadn't left the room since they had gotten back earlier in the day. He seemed to have claimed a chair and one of the small ottomans for himself, and was nearly finished Macbeth. The TARDIS had kindly lit a fire in the grate for them and the room danced with the light of the flames.

Rose sat at one of the many desks – her personal favourite, a Renaissance-era lacquered French piece with a velvet-upholstered chair – perusing the Naismith book for anything that might explain why this man was significant enough for alien telepaths to show him to the Doctor. All she had gathered so far was that he seemed like a right pompous git.

The deep clang of the TARDIS' cloister bell echoed around the library and Rose's head shot up. Tony, pulled from his book by the sound, looked over at her, worried. "What's that?"

"Means something bad's happening, or going to happen," she said. Together, they left for the console room.

"Rose," Tony said. "I think I know. I heard him, in my head. Come on!" He took off at a run, out the TARDIS doors and into the wasteland of rubble and construction materials in which they were still parked. Rose followed him in the low light, slowed by the need to dodge piles of detritus here and there.

They hadn't gone far when she saw the outline of Tony stop and bend down.

"He's unconscious," said the boy, bent over the prone form of the Doctor.


	22. The Price

The Doctor had regained consciousness short moments after they had found him and, after assuring Tony he was okay, had stalked wordlessly back to the TARDIS, hand on the back of his head where a rather notable lump had begun to form.

Rose and Tony followed him at a rapid clip, both finding it hard to keep up with the angry Time Lord with the far-too-long legs. Rose sent Tony to the galley to make tea and made for the library, where she knew the Doctor would most likely be found.

"What happened?"

"Got clocked in the back of the head with the butt of a rifle," he said, wincing as he touched the tender spot. He had a cloth full of ice in his hand which he must have grabbed as soon as he arrived home. "Some sort of troopers, private military from the look of it. They grabbed the Master and knocked me out."

"The Master? You saw him?" Rose's eyes went wide as she sat down beside him on the sofa.

He nodded, the movement causing him to wince again. "I talked to him. He's deranged. Worse than I've ever seen him. Not that he's ever been particularly sane, mind you. He should've been able to get away from a couple of commandos."

"Private military?" Rose stood and walked to her desk, grabbing Naismith's book and returning the few steps to drop down beside him again. "I think I know whose."

"Naismith?" The Doctor took the book from her hands.

She nodded. "Multibillionaire. He has his own private security force."

"Guess that tells us who they are and how he's involved, then. Now why would he want the Master?" His gaze drifted to the fire and he stared at the flames as he thought, his expression deeply troubled.

Tony entered with a tray of tea things. Any other day, Rose knew he would have complained about being made to fetch tea, but he seemed to understand that things larger than his discomfiture were at work.

"Time to do a little investigating, then?" asked Rose, a small smile creeping to her lips. They'd not been off on one of their mad adventures for a very long time.

"Oh of course," he said, drawing out the final word. "Wouldn't do to leave a Time Lord in the wrong hands."

"So, what do we do?" Tony asked, throwing himself into one of the leather chairs, legs over the arm.

Rose and the Doctor looked at him and turned back to each other. " _We_ don't do anything. _You_ will be somewhere safe and out of harm's way," Rose said.

"Roooose," he whined. "I can help, you know I can!"

"Listen to Rose, Tony," the Doctor said firmly. "We can't risk you getting hurt or getting caught up in something."

"But I want to help. I'm clever, _really_ clever."

"No," both Rose and the Doctor said at once.

"Not until you're older," the Doctor continued.

Rose shot him a look. "Or ever. You're my responsibility –"

" _Our_ responsibility," interjected the Doctor.

"and I'm not going to let anything happen to you."

Tony crossed his arms over his chest and glared. "I'm not going to win this one, am I?"

"No, you're _really_ not," the Doctor confirmed. "But how's this – you can spend the day with an immortal man who investigates aliens for a living. How's that sound, eh?"

Tony perked up. "Captain Jack?"

The Doctor looked over at Rose, his expression vaguely disgusted at the clear admiration in the boy's voice. "Yes, Tony, he means Jack," Rose confirmed. She could see wheels turning in Tony's head and made a mental note to warn Jack to keep his vortex manipulator well hidden.

"Now, to bed with you. Rose and I have things to discuss." The Doctor made a shooing motion. "Thanks for the tea, by the way."

"Have fun _discussing_ ," Tony teased as he left the room with a wave.

"That child," Rose groaned. "I'm not sure whether Jack's influence is a good idea."

The Doctor shrugged. "Would you rather Mickey?"

"Noooo," Rose said, eyes wide. "Mickey minded Tony once just after he turned four and Tony trapped him in the pantry and nearly set the house on fire."

"Maybe one of your friends?" Rose looked at him steadily, saying nothing. "Then again, you're dead, probably can't beg a favour."

"Jack's really the best option."

"Yeah," the Doctor agreed "and we definitely don't need to worry about him dying and leaving Tony unprotected."

Rose leaned against him and he brought his arm up casually around her shoulders. "Why do I feel like we're going to war?" she asked quietly, staring into the flames as if they might hold answers.

"I feel it too," he confirmed. "There's just something coming. The Ood warned me - something big stirring in the dark. Time is bleeding. Something once lost is moving through the veil. That's what they told me."

"And they said you'll die." She spoke the words steadily, but her heart jumped even at the thought.

She felt him nod, even though he didn't speak.

"Do you think you're going to die?" Her voice was very soft, and he took a minute to reply.

He leaned his head on hers where it rested at his shoulder. "Hope not. I've got an awful lot to live for these days, thanks to you."

"But you still think you're going to die."

"Yes," he said quietly. "Almost a year now, at every turn, every psychic I've run across has told me that my song is ending. There's just this sense I have, that something very bad is coming, and I've been running, Rose, because I don't want to go. I'm not ready. I have run and run, but I can't run any longer."

She couldn't think of anything to say to that, but simply lay against him, listening to the beating of his hearts until she fell into a fitful sleep.

* * *

They stepped out of their blue police box the following morning and the first thought that occurred to Rose was that she had definitely _not_ missed Cardiff.

"Should we go look for him?" Rose asked. Tony was still in his room, finishing up packing a small bag. The Wardrobe room in the TARDIS had had more than enough clothes in his size, though of a decidedly futuristic appearance, to replace the outgrown sets she had brought with them when they had left Earth. Rose knew that it could only be because of Adric, the Doctor's young companion who had died so many years ago. She'd avoided mentioning this fact to Tony and intended to shop for him properly once they had a chance.

The Doctor shook his head in reply to her question. "No, he'll find us."

Tony stepped out of the TARDIS behind them, a canvas rucksack slung over his shoulder. "He here yet?"

"Soon. Jack's never too far from the action."

"Jack is the action," came a confident, American voice from beside the TARDIS. Rose turned and squealed when she saw the blue-coated former captain leaning a shoulder against the ship, arms crossed over his chest. His clothes were a bit bedraggled and his hair messy and longer than usual. He looked like he'd been living rough for a while, but the roguish smile was still there, same as always. "Miss me?"

She squealed happily and threw her arms around the man. "Jack!"

His arms opened to meet her enthusiastic embrace with one of his own and he rocked her to the side in a fierce hug. "Rosie Rose Tyler! As I live and breathe, look at you!"

"And I bet you looked," she said flirtatiously.

"Undoubtedly," Jack replied with a wink. The Doctor rolled his eyes and groaned. "And who's this?" Rose didn't miss the very pained look that crossed Jack's face when he saw the boy.

"Tony Tyler, nice to meet you." Tony extended his hand, a wide smile on his face. "I've heard a lot about you!" His voice had a distinctly star-struck quality to it and Rose saw the Doctor's eyes narrow.

"Nice to meet you, Tony Tyler," the captain responded, eyes twinkling. He looked to Rose and the Doctor. "I'd offer to take you to my office, but I don't have one anymore. How's about we head into that fantastic kitchen in the TARDIS for tea, eh?"

"That would be best," the Doctor said.

A few minutes later, they were back in the TARDIS galley, Rose pouring four cups of tea.

"So Torchwood's gone then," the Doctor began.

Rose had never seen Jack so serious. Despite his playful banter when he'd met up with them, his eyes were shadowed and his smile looked painted on when she got a better look at him. The silly, playful man was wrapped up in grief. She knew the signs well enough.

"Very gone, blown to pieces. My staff's all dead or dispersed, and I've been around." He held up his wrist, showing the vortex manipulator. "This is my first time in Cardiff in almost six months and I only came because you called."

"I heard what happened, Jack. I'm sorry," said the Doctor, his expression softer than it ever had been whilst talking to Jack Harkness.

Rose looked between the two men inquiringly. "What happened?"

"It's a very long story, Rose, and I'm not ready to tell it," Jack said somberly. He pulled a flask out of his greatcoat and poured some of the alcohol into his tea. Rose raised an eyebrow at the Doctor, who shrugged subtly.

"Tony, how about you go back to your room and read for a bit," Rose suggested meaningfully. Tony made to argue but a sharp look from the blonde woman shut up him before he spoke a word and, with a sigh, he trod off to do as he was told. "I'm sorry, Jack, I really am, but I need to ask you a favour."

"Rose, I am the last person you should be asking for help," he said bitterly.

"Jack, I know how you feel. More than most. But you need to know that what happened wasn't your fault." The Doctor's tone was gentle, but the look Jack gave him was not. The dark-haired man took a deep breath, his nostrils flaring. A storm was brewing behind his blue eyes and Rose put a gentle hand on Jack's arm to still him. He directed his attention back to Rose, the energy going out of him before he voiced the thoughts roiling around behind his eyes.

"Something big is happening. Something bad, and the Doctor and I need to go deal with it."

"No." Jack said, leaving no room for argument. "I'm not watching the kid."

Rose, who Jack had always been unable to deny anything, was a bit taken aback. Not that he had deduced her request so quickly, but by his harsh tone and preemptive refusal. "We can't risk him," said Rose, a bit of desperation bleeding into her voice.

"We wouldn't be asking if we had anyone else, Jack," the Doctor said. Jack barked out a humourless laugh.

"You definitely don't know what happened, Doc, or you wouldn't be asking me to take care of a child."

"Jack, I _do_ know," he said darkly. "But you're the best chance we've got. We can't just leave Tony with anyone, not with what we're probably going into."

"I'm not doing it, Doc. Sorry." Jack drained the last of his tea in one movement and stood. "Lose my number, 'kay?"

He walked to the door of the galley and was nearly gone before Rose spoke up. "He's my son, Jack. I'm asking you to take my son in case we die."

The tall man turned back quickly, his coat swirling around his legs as he did. "You told me that you had a little _brother_ Tony when I saw you last."

"Cover story," Rose shrugged. "Couldn't go telling you the truth when even he" she jerked her head to the Doctor "didn't know."

Jack walked back over to the table and sat down, pushing shaggy, unkempt hair out of his eyes. "I know what that's like. He's yours too, then?" he asked the Time Lord.

"Yes. So you see why we can't just leave him with anybody."

"Making a bit more sense now, yeah," Jack agreed. "Mini Time Lord."

"Time tot," corrected the Doctor needlessly. "Or Timeling."

Rose laid a hand on one of Jack's, meeting his eyes carefully. "We can't risk anything happening to Tony, and if something happens to us we need to make sure he will be with someone who at least knows who he is, and there's no one else who could possibly know what that means."

"Rose, I can't," he said, his voice shuddering. "He looks just like…" Jack's voice trailed off and he swallowed heavily and closed his eyes tightly, dropping his his head into his hands.

The Doctor's eyes went wide with realization and horror. "Oh my God, Jack, I'm so sorry. I didn't know, I really didn't." He shook his head at Rose who had looked at him enquiringly.

A minute passed as Jack breathed deeply, regaining his composure. The Doctor and Rose remained silent, watching the once flirtatious and colourful man who sat, broken, at their table. Rose reached an arm around him and patted his back softly.

"Fine," he said, wiping the last traces of tears from his eyes, having apparently come to a conclusion in his mind. "I'll watch him. But then you fix this," he told the Doctor, pointing at his Vortex manipulator, which Rose knew could no longer travel in time. "You fix this for good. That's my price.""

"Done," said the Doctor. "When we're back, I'll fix it for you. For good."

The Doctor stood and motioned Rose and the Captain to follow him out to the console room. "Now, soon as we're ready, I'm taking us to the town nearest Naismith's mansion. Rose, you and I are going to go investigate. Jack, you stay here with Tony. Don't let him out of your sight. If anything happens to us, the TARDIS will let you know."

"And if you don't come back?"

"Then you stay with him until he's grown. There is no one else I'd rather trust him to," the Doctor said seriously.

Jack met the Doctor's eyes and Rose saw a look of understanding pass between the two men. She understood now that the Doctor's suggestion of Jack watching Tony hadn't been because he was the only option. There was a shared pain between the two men the depths of which she still didn't understand. The Doctor was not only offering an olive branch to his friend and former rival. In trusting his most precious loved one to the broken man, he was offering redemption.

* * *

 **A/N** For those who are wondering what's going on with Jack, I'll suggest you look up Day Five of the Torchwood Children of Earth arc (series 3) though be warned it is desperately sad. I hope this chapter's written in such a way that there's enough said that you shouldn't need the backstory to understand the emotion in the scene, since Rose doesn't know what happened herself. At this point in the continuity (Christmas 2009) Jack's been basically running about trying to drown his guilt for five and a half months or so.


	23. Time Sync

"As soon as we leave, I'm going to put the TARDIS a second out of sync with the rest of the universe. You'll be hidden away in a pocket of time, the only thing in all creation that exists in that phase. Should be enough to keep you out of trouble."

Jack was standing in a darkened corner of the console room, arms crossed over his chest. He carefully avoided looking at the boy who sat on the jump seat, looking displeased and feeling discarded.

The TARDIS groaned and creaked as they rematerialized. The Doctor checked the monitor and nodded. "We're here."

Rose walked into the console room, pulling on the black vest she'd managed to save from her U.N.I.T. days and zipped it. Her hair was plaited and held up with a clip. Tony recognized the battle dress uniform. He had seen Rose in her combats many a time and she always seemed different, harder, colder, whenever she wore the blacks. Her boots thudded heavily on the metal grating of the walkway as she walked over to the doctor to check the monitor which would show them the exterior.

Tony glared at the pair of them. He was _very_ upset to be left behind and he wasn't sure if he was upset because he couldn't come or was afraid they wouldn't come back.

The blonde woman came over and kneeled in front of him. "I'm sorry, Tony, I know you want to come, but this could be dangerous."

"I can help," he grumbled, not meeting her eyes.

Rose pulled him to her in a hug. "I know you could, Tony, but you also might get hurt and I'd never forgive myself."

"But you're all I've got left," Tony said sadly against Rose's shoulder.

She kissed the top of his head. "We'll probably be back before you know it, sweetheart." Her tone was soft. "I won't make a promise I can't be sure to keep, but I have already moved planets and jumped universes to keep you safe, I'm not going to risk all that now, eh?"

"Love you, Rose," he said in a small voice, scrunching his eyes closed.

"I love you too, Tony. You stay safe. If you're safe, I can keep the Doctor safe, eh? And you be good for Jack. He's had a hard go of it lately."

"'kay," he said morosely. He looked over to the captain whose eyes roved the console room, never meeting Tony's own.

Rose stood and joined the Doctor. Tony followed the pair of them to the door of the TARDIS. Rose stepped out into the large shed they had materialized in. The Doctor hung back and, on an impulse, spun around and took Tony in a tight hug.

"You be good, my boy. You be good and you take care of the TARDIS for me, and you take care of Rose because I am going to make sure she gets back to you." There was an urgency in the Doctor's voice Tony hadn't heard before.

"You sound like you're not planning to come back," Tony said. It felt like when John hugged him, and he hadn't realized how much he had missed this.

The Doctor squeezed him a big harder and then released him. He adjusted his coat and put a hand on Tony's shoulder. "Just don't wander off. Rule one, Tony. Don't wander off." He stepped out and closed the door behind him.

A moment later, Tony heard the whirring of a sonic screwdriver and felt as if a spider web had passed over his skin as they were shifted a second into the past.

"Well, this is rubbish," he said, crossing his arms over his chest and stalking down the corridor. He heard Jack's heavy steps on the grating as the man followed him.

Tony set off for his room. He had the very strange sense that things were going to go very wrong very soon, and he wanted to make sure he had his sonic with him, just in case.

He pushed open the door to his unadorned room. His sonic screwdriver rested, as it always did, in a small stand he had carved out of a dark red silvertree branch during their time on Gallifrey. The sonic was his most precious possession, given to him for Christmas when he was four years old by the man who had been like a second father to him.

Tony twirled the device in his fingers and threw himself on his bed in a huff.

"What am I supposed to do _now?_ " he whinged to the room at large.

The TARDIS hummed comfortingly to him. This one sounded different than the one he and Rose and John had grown. There was an elegance to her voice, like she was a refined lady instead of a bubbly child. Tony missed his own TARDIS, but the almost maternal voice of this one made him feel at home nonetheless.

He turned to look at the small bookcase he had in this room. The school texts that Rose had brought for him were stored there when they had moved into this TARDIS after the younger one kicked them out. The copy of Macbeth he'd picked up the day before was placed on top of the low case of books, as there'd been no room for it on the small shelves amongst the other books. But he noticed that the play was now accompanied by another blue book, this one similar to the ubiquitous notebooks John had left them, but this one was of a finer quality, with silver corners and a leather cover. He reached over and picked it up.

Tony didn't recognize it. Unlike the notebooks they had referenced for months while seeking Gallifrey, growing the TARDIS, and building components for her, this one was not battered and dog-eared. The cover was pristine, and the front bore a Gallifreyan phrase imprinted into the leather. He ran his fingers over the swirling text. The Doctor had taught him how to decipher some of the lettering, but he was nowhere near being able to read it on sight.

He wondered whether the TARDIS had brought him this. He'd occasionally found things returned to his room after leaving them elsewhere in the ship during their time living here, so he knew she could move things around within. The rate at which rooms moved about proved that.

The ship, wise and kind, seemed to know what he needed before he did sometimes. Unlike his own TARDIS, this one seemed to understand her humans well. He'd wake up to a glass of water or a cup of milky tea sometimes, and he was grateful for the care of the ship.

Tony sat cross-legged on his bed and flipped the book open.

" _Tony,_ " the book began in John's quick, slanted hand.

" _I asked Rose to give you this after I'm gone, in case there were things I didn't get a chance to say to you. There is a lot you should hear from me, and I regret that I won't be there to tell you everything myself…"_

* * *

Rose pressed herself to the wall beside the Doctor. They were by the opening in a long, brick wall, through which a driveway passed. The Doctor peered around the corner and pulled himself back quickly.

"There's a door over there. I'll open it and we'll head through, alright?"

"Alright," Rose said, her heart beating quickly. The familiar adrenaline was burning its way through her veins. She felt the heightened awareness that it brought to her, and embraced it. She had spent so many of the best moments in her life running in terror beside the Doctor, and today she knew she needed every bit of her caution and attention to detail. He may be convinced he would die, but she was equally convinced she wasn't about to let that happen.

After a quick nod to her, he bolted across the driveway and Rose followed in a crouch behind him. His sonic whirred quickly and the small door creaked open. They were through, into a low, dark tunnel, in seconds. Rose pulled the door closed behind her and followed the Doctor who was lighting the way with the tip of his sonic. "The Master is in the house, I can sense him," he whispered to her. "We need to find out why he's here."

A ways down the hall, Rose saw a green glow and it brightened as they crept closer. Before long, she heard a female voice.

"…all the systems are slotting back into place. The shatterthreads have harmonised, the fibre links intensified," the smile in her voice was audible and she sounded very impressed, "and the multiple overshots have triplicated."

"Nice Gate," said the Doctor, stepping out of the shadows to where the woman should be able to see him. Rose stepped out beside him and took in the sight of the surprised blonde scientist.

"Don't' try calling security," he continued, "or I'll tell them you're wearing a shimmer, 'cos I reckon anyone wearing a shimmer doesn't want the shimmer to be noticed or they wouldn't be wearing a shimmer in the first place."

"I'm sorry, what's a _shimmer_?" she asked, adopting a confused look.

The Doctor's sonic buzzed as he pointed it at her. " _Shimmer."_ Rose laughed softly to herself, amazed that he still couldn't resist the chance for some theatricality.

The woman's skin flashed and vanished and before them stood a bright green, spiky alien woman who was looking decidedly exasperated.

"You're Vinvocci," Rose exclaimed in surprised. "What the hell are you doing on Earth?"

"Miss Addams?" a voice came over the comm. "Miss Addams?" asked the male voice again.

"Salvage mission," the woman said, eyes darting here and there as if looking for an escape route. "We're here to collect Hipocci medical equipment."

"This is a hospital gate, isn't it?" Rose asked, looking at the equipment. The Doctor turned to her, more than a bit surprised that she recognized something he didn't. Rose grinned at him. "The Hipocci had them in the other universe too."

Miss Addams looked at her, very confused, but nodded. "Yes, it's a hospital gate, but it's broken."

The Doctor lunged for the desk and bent over the monitors, squinting through his specs. "It's not broken anymore. But why would he want this? What's it doing?" Rose bent to look at the screens beside the Doctor, but couldn't make out any of the text herself.

Rose heard footsteps approaching rapidly. "What's working? What are you doing?"

The Doctor didn't look up, simply swung his hand out with the sonic and declared "Shimmer!" The man's disguise fell away and another Vinvocci was revealed.

"Tell me quickly – what's going on? What is the Master, Harold Saxon, whatever you're calling him now, what's he doing with this gate?" The Doctor's voice brooked no argument, but the pair of Vinvocci salvagers looked back at him, confused. "What does it _do?_ " he urged.

"It mends," said the taller of the pair. "That's all. It is a medical device that repairs the body."

"But why would the Master need that?" Rose asked. "He can just regenerate."

"No, there's got to be more. Everything says there's something colossal coming and the Master's going to do it. Think think think think," he urged himself, scratching at his head with his hands in frustration.

A memory came to the fore of Rose's mind. "The Hipocci used these during a planet-wide plague, didn't they? This isn't just a single hospital." Something niggled at the back of her mind, some suggestion of what this might mean.

"Of course it's not a single hospital. It mends _whole planets_ ," said the female Vinvocci, as if Rose were thick.

"It does what?" asked the Doctor, his head snapping up.

The green woman explained, "It transmits the medical template across the entire population."

The Doctor's eyes went wide. "Rose!" he yelled as he bolted from the room. She took off after him and together they ran down the dark corridors. He turned left and right and right again. Rose's heavy boots clomped as she followed, grateful for all the training she had done in this gear which allowed her to keep up with him.

"Turn off the Gate! Turn it off right now!" screamed the Doctor as he pushed his way through two large doors into a bright room at the end of a corridor. Rose came in behind him, slowing as she saw the guns pointed in their direction. The man she supposed must be the Master was wrapped in a straitjacket, guarded by armed men, with a red leather collar around his neck.

"No, no, no, no, don't let him near that device no matter what you do!" The Doctor's eyes were wide with panic as he looked wildly around the room to try to make someone listen.

The crazed blonde Time Lord laughed. "Oh like that was _ever_ going to happen!" He tore off the white jacket and leaped over to the gate, vaulting himself on streams of blue light from his hands, landing within the shimmering, electric blue energy field.

"Dying, was I? Well, look at me now, Doctor!" Rose felt an intense revulsion at the sight of his insane grin.

"Shut it down!" Rose said loudly, running towards the controls. "Somebody turn the bloody thing off!"

"Deactivate it, all of you, turn the whole thing off!" yelled the Doctor, darting towards Naismith and his daughter.

"He's inside my head," groaned Naismith, shaking his head and wincing.

"Doctor, I can't turn it off!" Rose said desperately from the comm.

The Master chuckled cruelly. "That's because I locked it, you moron. Fifty seconds and counting!" His voice was high and crazed.

"To what?"

"Oh you're going to love this!"

Rose could see on a television on the desk that there was a live transmission of some sort of press conference. The people in the video feed were grasping their heads, some shaking.

"His face," moaned Naismith's daughter. "It's inside my head! Those dreams!"

"What is it?" the Doctor asked the other man desperately. "Are you grafting your thoughts into their minds? Is that it?"

"Oh no, no no. Watch and learn, Doctor!"

Rose watched the faces of the people in the room shake and blur as they twisted rapidly, fading and flickering between images like a telly that was receiving a bad signal. Her breath came in ragged gasps as she exchanged terrified, confused looks with the Doctor.

A moment later, the blonde Time Lord's face was looking back at Rose and the Doctor from the head of everyone else in the room.

From the TV, she heard that gleefully mad voice proclaim "Breaking news! I'm everyone. And everyone in the world is me!"


	24. A New Direction

"How're you doing, kiddo?" Jack asked as Tony entered the galley.

Tony looked up at him and blinked a few times, having completely forgotten about the immortal future man who was supposed to be watching him. "'m fine. Just wanted some milk." He walked over to the fridge and fetched the pitcher and took a long drink from the side of the open glass vessel.

"That's disgusting, Tony," Jack said, looking a bit horrified.

Tony wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and placed the pitcher in the sink. "It was the last of it. Didn't need to dirty a glass." He turned to leave the room, but decided against it at the last minute. "What happened to you?" He returned to the fridge and grabbed himself and Jack each a bottle of root beer.

Jack looked at him curiously as the boy handed him a brown glass bottle. Tony saw that his eyes were hooded and his skin wan. Depression was etched into every line of his deceptively young face and the way he sat – guarded and cowed – spoke of a man with regrets. Tony had always prided himself on his observational skills. He didn't need to know, as he did, that Jack had survived horrors and still came away from them as a happy, silly man, to realize that the man in front of him was profoundly changed. He seemed to size Tony up before he spoke.

"A lot of people died. People I loved." He twisted the cap off his root beet and took a swig. He raised and eyebrow and tipped the bottle so he could read the label and one corner of his lips crept up in a weak smile.

Tony sat down opposite him at the table. "Same here. Almost everyone is gone. 'Cept Rose, and the Doctor. The ones who aren't dead are in the other universe, so they might as well be."

Jack laughed humourlessly. "I guess you're one up on me there, kiddo." He raised his drink in a mock toast, and Tony tapped the neck of his bottle to Jack's.

"I've heard all about you. From Rose." Tony said. "You're really brave."

"Ha," he snorted derisively. "Think I'm going to need to talk to Rose when she gets back. She's spreading lies about me." He took a swig of the pop.

"Did you kill somebody?" Tony asked directly. Jack's eyes snapped to him. "You've got the same look as the Doctor does when he starts thinking about his people. He blames himself. You're blaming yourself."

"You…" Jack began, cutting himself off with a shake of his head. "You're very perceptive, kid. And you're right. I killed somebody, and he looked just like you."

"Who was he?"

"Where are all these questions coming from?"

Tony shrugged. "I'm ten and I'm curious so you should humour me. If we're going to be stuck here, I may as well learn about you since you're obviously not the same Jack that Rose told me about."

"No, I'm not," he agreed. "I've lived a long time since then."

"Do you still make up the rules as you go?" Tony asked hopefully. He tried for nonchalant, but couldn't quite manage it. Perhaps Jack could be convinced to help him.

Jack watched him for a long moment. "You'd better not be planning anything that'd get me into trouble. If there's two people in this entire universe I don't want to piss off, it's Rose Tyler and the Doctor."

The boy sighed. "I can't just wait here, hoping they don't die. I need to do something."

"Yes, you can wait here hoping they don't die. And you don't need to do anything. Kids shouldn't get mixed up in this sort of stuff. Believe me, I know that better than anyone. You're staying here if I have to tie you to a chair." The dark-haired man ran a hand over his unshaven face, sighing as he did so.

"But you can't like it any more than I do, being stuck here."

"Nope," he said. He took a long drink of his pop and slammed it down on the table. "But I've had enough of fighting other peoples' battles for them. I'm done."

"Coward," Tony mumbled. _You really should never meet your heroes,_ he thought to himself.

"Maybe. But at least I won't kill anyone else along the way." Jack looked away, glaring at the wall across the room.

Tony got up, leaving his half-full drink on the table, and left for the console room.

He paced around the console, this way and that, simmering. He needed to get to Rose and the Doctor. _Now._

The exterior monitor blinked on as Tony walked past and his eyes darted over to it.

Outside, in the gathering shadow of the large shed they'd been parked in, were two tall figures. They wore scarlet robes and large, golden headpieces that stretched out almost like wings behind their heads. And despite the fact that the TARDIS should not be in sync with the remainder of the universe and there was absolutely no way they should be able to see it, they were looking straight into the camera.

"Come out at once," the taller of the two men intoned.

"Jack!" Tony yelled towards the corridor. "We have a problem!"

* * *

All things considered, the Doctor had had better days. He had also had worse days. However, being strapped to a decidedly uncomfortable chair with his head immobilized was pushing it up there on his "bad days" list. That Rose was unconscious and tied to another chair beside him wasn't helping.

"You do like playing with your Earth girls," the Master sneered, raising his hand to slap Rose forcefully. Her head lolled to the side and she didn't regain consciousness. "Lucy was a bit of fun but this one, ugh." His voice was laced with disgust. "Isn't it bad enough that your father didn't know better?"

The Doctor growled low in his throat, unable to speak for the strap over his mouth. The mad Time Lord reached over and removed the strap.

Rose groaned as consciousness returned. "Oh look at this! The Doctor's little pet rejoins the land of the living. So this is the one who absorbed the Time Vortex. Bit of an upgrade from your old toys, isn't she, Doctor? She's prettier, I'll give you that." The Master ran a finger down the side of her face. Rose shuddered and pulled away.

"Don't you dare touch her," the Doctor seethed. "She dissolved half a million Daleks. _My_ _wife_ could kill you with a thought." He truly didn't know if she could access the Bad Wolf on demand, but sincerely hoped so at the moment.

"And I'm really tempted," said Rose. The Doctor saw the faint glow of gold around the edges of her chocolate brown irises out of the corner of his eye.

"Your wife? You actually married one of them?"

"So did you," Rose pointed out.

He shuddered theatrically. "Lucy was a plot device. Means to an end. Humans are for fun, not marriage. But you're not just a human anymore, are you? You didn't change." He sound delighted.

"Direct exposure to the Time Vortex will do that."

"It will do a whole lot of things," the Master said darkly.

"Like plant a signal in the head of a child," the Doctor clarified.

The Master twirled around and shouted, "Yes! YES! The Doctor finally gets it now. It's there, it's really there." His eyes were wild, dancing back and forth in time with the rhythm that echoed in his mind.

"They broke you," the Doctor said. "They broke you and I can try to fix you, Koschei." Rude as it was to use a Named Time Lord's true name, the Doctor would try anything to throw the man off kilter. Calling back to their shared childhood would be the most likely to do that.

"Oh shut up, _Doctor_ " he seethed. The Master raised his hand him and laughed when the Doctor couldn't suppress an automatic cringe. "You never did know when to shut up. But _can you hear it?_ Listen! Duh duh duh duh, duh duh duh duh," he made the sound of the mocking drumbeat in his head.

"Let's find it, you and me," the Doctor said calmly. "Let's find it. We'll show you the universe, we'll go back and we'll try to find this signal and we'll try to fix it. It would be my honour for you to travel with us."

"We can take you back to the Schism, back to Gallifrey, where it started," Rose interjected. "On the beach by the coral sea."

"Don't you lie to me," he screamed at Rose. "You human filth! You diseased ape. Don't talk of what you can't possibly understand. CAN'T YOU HEAR IT?!" He was screaming now.

He looked up suddenly, eyes wide. "Oh yes, but that's perfect. Oh that's good. They can hear it. They can all hear it." The Master's face split in a manic grin and he laughed wildly. His flesh flashed translucent and it looked as if a skeleton was laughing.

"You're still dying," said the Doctor. "The Gate isn't enough to save you."

"This body is born from death, it can only ever die. But what you said to me, back in the Wasteland, you remember? The end of time?"

The Doctor's eyes darted over to Rose, who he could tell was suppressing all traces of terror. "It's a prophecy, I was shown a prophecy and I need your help because something is returning."

The wild Time Lord's face broke in a feral grin, his eyes flashing. "Don't you see it? This drumbeat from so far away, from the end of time itself. I can triangulate those signals. All six billion signals, and find the source. Oh Doctor, that's what your prophecy was. Me!" He finished triumphantly, throwing his arms out for effect. One of his raised arms fell rapidly and smacked the Doctor's cheek. "Where's your TARDIS?"

"No, just stop and think. You don't need to own the universe."

"Shoot her if he doesn't answer," ordered the Master, waving a guard over. The guard raised his gun and pointed at Rose. "One last time. Where. Is. Your. TARDIS?"

"Don't tell him," Rose urged, voice tight.

"You can't seriously expect I'd tell you," the Doctor said with a roll of his eyes.

"You want to keep your little woman? I need that technology, Doctor. You tell me or she's dead."

"You know what really amazes me about you? For all your brilliance and all your plans. You are still bone dead stupid."

"Guard," the Master ordered. "Finger on the trigger."

The Doctor went on. "You've got six billion pairs of eyes and you still can't see what's right in front of you."

"Like what?" The Doctor didn't have a chance to reply as a rifle butt smashed down on the back of the Master's head.

"Took you long enough!" Rose growled. "Untie us!"

The Vinvocci woman untied Rose's straps quickly and Rose moved over to help her with the Doctor's bindings.

"Come on, we need to get out of here _now_ ," the Vinvocci man worried at them.

"Just wheel him!"

"No, no, no, no," The Doctor howled as they wheeled the chair, with him tightly strapped to it, out of the room. Rose followed behind, barely suppressing her laughter. For all the seriousness of the moment, she couldn't help but marvel at the absurdity of it.

"Worst rescue EVER!" he cried as they hit the stairs, and he uttered an 'ow' each time they dropped him down another step. Rose lost it. She had to stuff a hand in her mouth to keep from laughing as she chased the Vinvocci wheeling her husband down the stairs.

They were soon in the bowels of the mansion. The Vinvocci ran down dark corridors with Rose trailing behind.

"No, I have my TARDIS, no, not this way," the Doctor's voice echoed back.

"I know what I'm doing," Miss Addams insisted. "We can teleport from – "

Rose reached out and grabbed the Vinvocci woman's shoulder. "Just _shut_ up," Rose ordered. "We have safe transport. Come on, this way!" She led them down the corridor she and the Doctor had used to enter. Back into the low tunnel.

They reached the end of the tunnel and were in complete darkness. "Silence," she hissed at the others. She reached into Doctor's jacket and pulled out his sonic. The sound seemed far too loud in the otherwise silent space. The straps fell away and Rose felt the Doctor's long-fingered hand take the sonic from hers.

"Thanks," he whispered. There was the rustle of fabric as he replaced the sonic in his pocket.

"Now what?" hissed the tall Vinvocci man.

The Doctor pushed open the door, still unlocked from when they entered, and peeked his head out. Seeing no one in the immediate vicinity, he exited the tunnel and waved the others out.

They ran quickly across the open driveway and slipped quietly back into the gatehouse where the TARDIS had been parked.

Rose entered last and found herself running into the Doctor's back. She turned to look into the room. The TARDIS was still invisible, but three figures were definitely not.

At the end of the long room stood two tall men in scarlet robes, ornamental golden headpieces framing their faces, and between them, a young boy.

"Tony!" Rose screamed, lunging forward. "Get your hands off him!" She realized belatedly the Doctor was at her side, screaming something in Gallifreyan.

"Rose," Tony cried desperately.

With a twist of a bracelet, the Time Lords and Tony vanished.


	25. Contact

A/N: Thanks for all the lovely reviews, guys. I have very much enjoyed writing this story (it is finished) and I'm glad so many of you are enjoying reading it.

* * *

"Where did they go?" Rose hissed at the Doctor, panic rising in her throat. "Can't you just undo their teleport?"

"I can't reverse Time Lord teleports," he said back flatly. "How were they here?"

"Where's Tony?!"

"If you would stop screaming in my ear for two minutes I'd be able to figure it out, Rose" the Doctor growled at her. He waved his sonic in the direction of the TARDIS and the ship rematerialized as it came back into phase with the Earth. "Get in." The Vinvocci obeyed in silence, their eyes going wide when they entered the time ship but their mouths staying shut.

The Doctor was the last of the four through the doors and when he entered, Rose saw the fury of the Oncoming Storm in his face. "HARKNESS," he howled into the ship.

No one came. He ran to the console and tapped in a few commands. Not seeing anything helpful, he slammed his closed fist against the side of the monitor. "Come on!" The Doctor punched the monitor again. "Jack's gone. Teleported away, and it's too long ago to undo it."

Rose seethed. They had trusted him. They had trusted that back-stabbing conman with the most precious child in existence and he had run. As soon as she found the man, she would grind his head into dust and then light him on fire when he reanimated. The Doctor was adjusting controls far more roughly than usual and the TARDIS' lights dipped in objection.

"How were there Time Lords here, Doctor? Those were Time Lords, and they were here, and they can't be." Her voice shook as the reality of what she'd seen sank in.

The Doctor looked at Rose sharply. "Do you think I don't know that? There is no possible way they should have been able to be here. Something is very wrong. The Time Lock is breaking down."

"We need to get out of here," she added, the realization that sitting under the Master's nose with a TARDIS was probably not the best place to be.

"Yeah, I thought of that, Rose." He said sarcastically as he slammed a single button on the console. A number of switches flicked, lights went on and off, and the time rotor wheezed as it climbed and fell. "We have to get off Earth. Now."

"Where are we going?" Miss Addams asked.

"The Moon. Just far enough away he shouldn't be able to sense us, but close enough I can get readings from the planet." The TARDIS settled a moment earlier. They'd not entered the Vortex or gone terribly far, relatively speaking, so the ship hadn't shaken much.

"Who was that boy? And those people." Rossiter, the tall Vinvocci man, asked Rose sotto voce.

She looked at him, her eyes falling flat. "Our son." It was the first time she had ever spoken those words aloud, and she was surprised the honesty had come to her so easily. "He's our son, and those were some of the Doctor's people. Who are supposed to be dead."

"Time locked," the Doctor corrected.

"I'm sorry," Addams said insincerely. "But could you maybe take us to our ship in orbit? Local politics really aren't our thing…"

"The Master has control of every missile on the planet, you won't break orbit before he blows you up." The Time Lord spoke in a low, dangerous voice, eyes flashing. "So sit down, shut up, and stay out of my way."

The pair of Vinvocci looked at him with wide eyes and moved to the side of the room to sit on the floor. They whispered quietly to each other, but neither the Doctor nor Rose paid them any mind.

The Doctor was staring, unseeing, at one of the monitors on the console. His body was like a coiled spring, ready to erupt at the right trigger. Rose came up behind him and laid a hand on his shoulder.

"We will get him back," she said with a certainty she didn't feel.

The Doctor hung his head and turned to look up at her. "Rose, when I ended the war," his voice was tight with the iron will it took to control his emotions any time he spoke of the war, "When I used the Moment and I ended everything, I locked them. The whole war, it's time locked. They're trapped in the last day. They shouldn't be able to get out."

"Time is bleeding, that's what the Ood told you," said Rose, the memory of the conversation coming back to her.

He let out a long breath, pushed himself away from the console, and began to pace the darkened room as he worked through the information he had. "You're right, they did. So that means there are cracks in time, disruptions. There must be some sort of crack they were able to come through, something that stretched back into the time lock and is breaking it down."

Rose was troubled. Something else he had told her a long time ago came back to her. "But if a couple of Time Lords could make it out of the Time Lock, what's to stop all the other horrible things that were there from coming through?"

Face set with a grim determination, the Doctor said, "Nothing. Nothing can stop them, not if they find a link strong enough to wedge open those cracks. There's some sort of convergence. There's something about Earth, so many things, just too many to be coincidental. There's something bigger coming than just a few monsters through some temporal rifts."

"Doctor," she said, her eyes darting to the monitor. He turned to watch with her. A large stream of fire was visible over the Earth, curling downward as it entered the spinning planet's gravity and seemed to reach the end of its trajectory on the island of Great Britain. "Another one of those coincidences?"

"Looks like," the Doctor said, looking over the top of his specs, frowning.

"The Master has taken over the Earth, we're on the moon, Time Lords have abducted our son, and it's the end of time itself," Rose summarized, surprised that her voice didn't waver.

"Time for tea?" the Doctor asked.

She nodded. "Tea."

It was, perhaps, the most eminently British thing she had ever done, to be facing the end of the world and decide to brew a pot of tea. Her mum had always pressed a cuppa into the hands of anyone in a crisis, which had annoyed Rose to no end when she was younger but as the years went by, she had realized the value of it. That spot of warmth that could centre the mind; the drinking of it automatic in its familiarity. It was a way to ground people, to hold panic at bay, and to give yourself time to think. Rose remembered the Sycorax invasion, when it had been that habit of Jackie's that had ultimately saved the Earth, when the tea had brought the Doctor 'round enough to challenge the invaders. If a thermos of tea had saved the world, maybe a pot of it would do the same for time.

Steaming cup of tea in hand, Rose wandered the corridors. The Vinvocci had followed them to the galley and were chattering inanely and she'd not wanted to listen to them. She tried to clear her mind as she walked, but her thoughts, naturally, kept drifting to Tony. She knew they needed more information before they could act, and their best bet of finding him would be to figure out what enabled them to break out of the time lock in the first place. But still, she was employing every bit of her training as a Torchwood agent and a U.N.I.T. captain to suppress the desire to scream and rampage and tear the worlds apart until she found him. That wouldn't do any good, she knew, but her heart still beat heavily in her chest as instinct warred with conditioning to rule her.

She found herself suddenly in front of Tony's bedroom door, her thoughts having directed her this way. She pushed open the door and breathed in deeply. The room still had his familiar scent. He'd spent so much time outside on Gallifrey that he perpetually smelled of the grass and the earth and the salt air that blew in from the sea. He had spent so little time outdoors in London and Rose had loved seeing how he had taken to spending his time on the land in the months they spent on that warmly coloured planet.

Rose stepped into his room and looked around. The room was simple and white. A bookshelf to one side, stuffed with texts, was the most occupied part of the space. There was a small, simple table he used as a desk, where the stand for his sonic screwdriver stood empty. Rose smiled to herself on seeing it was empty, glad he at least had the tool with him. While he was nowhere near the Doctor's skill in finding his way out of situations with the device, he certainly had picked up more than a few tricks from John and then the Doctor.

Beside the red wood stand lay a book. Rose's heart dropped to her feet when she saw it. She knew every inch of that book, having kept it safe for over a year and agonizing over when to give it to the boy. She couldn't bear the thought of Tony hating her once the truth was known and while she knew he would have to be told eventually, even now, the thought that he might know, left her feeling sick.

A dry, cracked, silver leaf had been inserted between two pages as a bookmark. Rose reached over, placing her tea on the desk, and picked up the journal with shaking hands, opening it to the indicated page.

Her eyes scanned the familiar words, and she saw, beside the swirling Gallifreyan phrase that John had used to sign off every entry, Tony's own pencil marks, where he had translated it.

" _Your loving father,"_ read the boy's neat cursive.

Rose dropped onto the soft yellow duvet, holding the book to her chest. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, trying to calm the rolling unease within her.

"He saw it, then?" the Doctor's voice came from the doorway. Rose looked up at him. He stood with his arms crossed over his chest, leaning against the doorjamb.

It took a moment for the words to sink in and when they did, Rose wasn't sure whether to scream or cry. "Why didn't you ask me?"

The tall man stepped in and sat down beside her, folding his hands in his lap. He spoke softly, but without a hint of contrition in his voice. "I let John tell him," he nodded to the book, "because Tony needed to know, and at least this way, we both got to tell him."

"I wasn't ready for him to know," she whispered. "I don't want him to hate me."

"Oh, Rose," the Doctor said, hugging her sideways around her shoulders. "He would never hate you. I don't think he has it in him." He paused a moment, seeming uncertain about telling her more. " _I_ needed to tell him. In case anything happens. Just like John with the journal, I had to make sure he would know."

She leaned her head on the man's shoulder, letting out a sigh. "I reserve the right to be pissed off at you later," she mumbled. "But right now, I just want to find him and we can sort out the rest after."

The Doctor kissed the top of her head and let out a sigh of his own. "Then that's what we'll do."

"Any big epiphanies?" Rose asked. She'd not had any ideas of her own.

He shook his head. "Nothing."

"Well, you're usually good at coming up with something in the face of danger, so maybe we should just to materialize in front of the Master and take it from there."

"Rose, I like your style," he said with a half-smile at her, nudging her shoulder playfully.

"Doctor, I think you might want to hear this," called Rossiter, the male Vinvocci. "There's a wide band transmission coming in from Earth."

The Doctor left Tony's room and Rose followed close behind, replacing the journal on his desk as she left. They were soon in the console room. Rossitter handed the Doctor his communicator and pushed a button which apparently played the recorded signal.

Rose could almost hear the elation in his voice as he spoke. "A star fell from the sky." He spoke softly, but with an edge of the madness she knew was barely beneath the surface. "Don't you want to know where from?"

The Doctor drew his lips into a firm line, his nostrils flaring. "Because now it makes sense, Doctor," the Time Lord's voice rang out from the communicator. "The whole of my life. My Destiny. That star was a diamond."

Rose felt the Doctor tense beside her, his eyes wide with surprise. "And that diamond is a white point star." Surprise took her as well.

"No," the Doctor hissed. "That is not possible." His hands clenched into fists at his sides.

"And I have worked all night to sanctify that gift. Now the star is mine. I can increase the signal and use it as a lifeline." She could hear the grin on his face in the way he twirled the words as he spoke. "Do you get it now? Do you see? Keep watching, Doctor. This should be _spectacular._ Over and out." The communicator went quiet, but a moment later a sound began. A rhythm of four, cast out into the universe.

"What's that about?" asked Addams, clearly still peeved at not being returned to her ship.

"A whitepoint star is only found on Gallifrey," Rose said. "The Doctor's home planet. There's no reason one should be falling to Earth."

"It's the Time Lords, Rose," he breathed heavily. "The Time Lords are returning. They've found a crack and they made a link."

"Oh my God," she said, her eyes going wide. "So everything is coming through."

His eyes, hard and cold, met hers. "The Time War is coming to Earth."


	26. Descent

"Here!" he pointed towards one of the sets of coordinates. "There's a rupture, right at the Naismith mansion. It's the Gate! He's using the Gate to stabilize a rupture!" He was frantic as he jumped about to adjust the coordinates on the TARDIS.

"Then let's get down there and shut it down," Rose said firmly.

He fired a sharp look at Rose. "Let's."

The Vinvocci salvage workwoman spoke up. "If you _don't_ mind, we would like to be returned to our ship. This has nothing to do with us and we'd rather take our chances with the missiles, thanks."

"Not a chance. Thank you for rescuing me, now I'm returning the favour," said the Doctor. He pulled a lever to send them back to Earth. "Allons-y!"

They materialized in an uninhabited but opulent room. Rose pushed the TARDIS doors open and stepped out. The walls were decorated with paintings and rich, intricate tapestries. Fine fabrics and furniture occupied the space. They were clearly back in the mansion. The Doctor exited the TARDIS behind her and walked to the door.

"Think they'll stay in there?" Rose asked.

The Doctor shrugged. "Not my problem. Their teleport is downstairs; they can leave if they want, or they can stay safe in the TARDIS. I just wasn't going to waste time taking them back to their ship. Now, they should be just down this way…"

He listened carefully at the door and then stepped out into the corridor, Rose a step behind. She kept her breath steady and focused on keeping her ears open and her eyes alert. He ushered her through a door and up a steel staircase. "The Master clones are everywhere," he said urgently. "We can't get there through the corridors."

They stepped out a moment later onto the roof, the wide expanse of the mansion's well-tended grounds stretching before them, onward towards the tall trees of the surrounding woods. Rose blinked as her eyes adjusted to the bright light of the day.

Rose reached into one of the many pockets of her combats and drew out her secondary pistol. "Doctor, take this."

"Rose, I can't. You know I can't," he said softly, radiating hurt even at the suggestion.

She looked into his eyes, her own determined. "To hell with your gun aversion, Doctor. You take that weapon, you take it with you and you do anything you have to do to protect our son." Her voice was hard, commanding, every bit the Captain Tyler she had long been. "'No' is not an option here."

Rose pressed the pistol into his hands and was relieved when he shoved it, distaste etched on his features, into his inside breast pocket. "But only because it's you," he said, the disapproval in his face making it clear he wasn't happy about taking the firearm.

She nodded once, satisfied that at least he would have something besides his sonic. "Now, how are we going to get in?"

"I'll think of something," the Doctor said. Far to their right, the glass dome Rose remembered looking through when she'd been tied to a chair earlier was glowing brightly. Even in the bright sun of the day, streaming white light poured out of the windows. "No no no no no," the Doctor said as he took off at a run, long legs carrying him over great stretches of the roof as he went. Rose followed behind him at a quick clip, boots thudding heavily, sending up sprays of the gravel that lined the top of the building with each step.

As the Doctor reached the edge of the glass dome, he leapt high into the air and landed on the curved side of the skylight. Rose felt time slow around her as the glass cracked and the dome gave way beneath his momentum. She watched as if in slow motion as he dropped into the room amid a million tinkling shards of glass.

* * *

The Doctor groaned in pain from where he lay on the floor, surrounded by pieces of the shattered window he had dropped through. His body ached with the movement of breathing.

"My Lord Doctor, and My Lord Master," the deep, resonant voice of Lord High President Rassilon boomed, "We are gathered for the end."

He pushed himself up on shaking arms. "Listen to me! You can't!" His eyes focused through the haze of pain and he saw Tony standing beside a Time Lady who covered her face in shame. The hand of one of the Time Lords the Doctor had seen earlier was on his shoulder, digging in with long fingers. The Doctor made to move for the child but Rassilon's voice stopped him. Tony looked at the Doctor, his eyes wide with fear.

"It is a fitting paradox that our salvation comes at the hands of our most infamous child." The self-satisfied smirk on the ancient Time Lord's face stirred to life a rage in the Doctor's hearts.

"Oh he's not saving you. Don't you realize what he's doing?" The Doctor's voice was urgent as he willed Rassilon to understand.

"Hey, no, hey! Hush, you. Look around. I've transplanted myself into every single human. But who wants a mongrel little species like them, because now I can transplant myself into every single Time Lord. Oh, yes, Mister President, sir, standing there all noble and resplendent and decrepit. Think how much better you're going to look as me!"

Rassilon raised his hand, heavy metal gauntlet glinting in the light of the room. A glow started in the sheen of the metal and rose to blazing brightness. The transformed humans shook and shuddered as they faded back into their original faces, the Master screaming his objections as they changed. The Doctor's eyes caught the frantic, panicked movements of the scientist trapped in the nuclear bolt gate, his hands scrabbling at the locked glass door.

"On your knees, mankind," the scarlet-robed Rassilon ordered. The Doctor gritted his teeth as he saw the assembled people obey. It was with some pride that he saw that Tony stood firm even when the council member pressed down on his shoulder to try to force him to kneel. The Doctor pushed himself painfully to his feet and took a step forward.

His once-friend's face broke into a manic grin. "You said _salvation._ I saved you! Don't forget that, Mister President," the Master insisted.

Ignoring the crazed man, the tall, sombre President raised his head and intoned. "The approach begins."

"Approach of what?" croaked the Master, confused.

The Doctor turned and ground out, "Some _thing_ is returning? Don't you ever listen? That was the prophecy. Not some _one._ Some _thing._ "

"What is it?"

"It's Gallifrey tearing through the void. Right here, right now!" he yelled as the Earth rumbled and heaved beneath them. Through the shattered glass of the dome high above, the orange globe of Gallifrey came gradually into view, as a figure from a fog. It hung in the sky like a moon too large for life.

The room rattled and paintings fell from their hooks. People screamed and ran for the wide doors. From the corner of his eye, the Doctor saw Rose push through the fleeing throng and into the room. He breathed deeply to control his rising fear, not wanting the others to note the new occupants of the space. His eyes went wide and his hearts dropped as he saw Rose enter the bolt chamber. He shoved down the urge to call out to her. Rose released the frightened scientist with a push of a button.

"But I did this. I get the credit. I'm on your side!" the Master shouted with a hint of panic in his voice. His eyes roved the rage-filled, hardened face of his oldest friend and dearest enemy. "The Time Lords restored! This is fantastic!"

"You weren't _there_ , in the final days of the War. You never saw what was born! If the time lock breaks then everything's coming through. Not just the Daleks, but the Skaro Degradations, the Horde of Travesties," he shouted over the deep, rumbling cracks of the Earth being shorn by gravitational forces. From the corner of his eye, he could see Tony trying to get away from the distracted Time Lord who still held him firm. "The Nightmare Child, the Could-have-been King with his army of Meanwhiles and Never-weres. The War turned into _hell_ and that's what you've opened. Right above the Earth." His eyes burned into the Master's, his face contorted in loathing. "Hell is descending!"

"My kind of world," yelled the crazed Time Lord, clapping his hands together with a ferocious grin.

"Even the Time Lords can't survive that!" The Doctor was shaking with rage.

Rassilon's voice resonated through the room with a terrifying finality. "We will initiate the Final Sanction! The end of time will come at my hand. The rupture will continue until it rips the Time Vortex apart!" Spittle flew from his mouth and his eyes gleamed with zealous fervor as he clenched his fist in victory.

"That's suicide," hissed the Master.

"We will ascend to become creatures of consciousness alone. Free of these bodies, free of time and cause and effect while creation itself ceases to be."

"No!" screamed a high, young voice. Rose screamed from within the bolt chamber as Tony finally pulled away from the man who held him, rushing toward Rassilon. "You can't!"

Rassilon gripped Tony's face with his gauntleted hand. "You will learn your place, child." He raised Tony into the air by his neck. The boy's legs kicked as he tried to free himself.

"Get your hands off of MY SON," roared the Doctor dangerously, his eyes flashing as he lunged forward. "Let him go!" Tony shook and wriggled, trying to get away, but the strength of the ancient, god-like man kept him in place. Metal bit into his cheek and the Doctor saw blood trickle down his neck.

"Oh now isn't that perfect," the Master said with a gleeful laugh in his voice, eyes darting from Rose screaming in the bolt chamber to the boy clutched in Rassilon's hand.

"My Lord Counsel brought this to me, this whelp found in your ship, revealed by a rift in time. I have brought him here, at the end, that you might face your shame. You further pollute our noble species with this _mongrel child_?" Rassilon spat, distaste etched into his every feature.

The Doctor pulled Rose's pistol from the pocket of his jacket and aimed it for Rassilon's head. "Don't you dare call him that. Let him go." he spat. "Let him go right now."

"The last act of your life is murder, but do not think it will save this child or this world." Rassilon lifted Tony high into the air and threw him to the side of the room. The Doctor's eyes followed him and his face contorted with pain as he saw his son hit the wall and crumple to the floor. Rose was screaming in the bolt, tears pouring down her face as she hit the Vinvocci glass with all of her strength.

He rushed over to Tony's side. The boy's pulse was weak and he dragged ragged breaths through his crushed trachea. His eyes were wild with panic and blood dripped from the side of his mouth. The Time Lord dropped to his knees beside the boy. Tony's lips were turning blue and his eyes were spinning in his head.

Rose's pained howls of outrage were echoing in his ears. Gunshots rang out as she tried to break the chamber door with bullets, but was unable to escape the glass prison.

"Tony, Tony, listen. It's me, focus on my voice, okay?" the Doctor pleaded the boy. A gurgle was all he got in response.

The deep, cruel laugh of Rassilon rang out behind them. "A weakling child, undeserving of our glory."

"I am worthy! Take _me_ with you!" the Master exclaimed. "Let me ascend into glory with you!"

"Shut up!" Rose howled at the Time Lords from the glass room. The Doctor's eyes flickered over to her and he saw golden light surrounding his wife, reaching out in spiralling ribbons towards himself and Tony. He felt time suspend, as strongly as if he were physically held in the air, his time sense losing all sensation of the steady march of the universe. Rassilon and the Master, the Time Lords, even the approach of Gallifrey itself froze behind the burning, bright haze. The world stopped, and they were locked in a moment. Rose's eyes blazed. "Help him," she begged, her voice echoing within itself.

Tony's bubbling, gurgling breaths grew weaker and his eyes went wide. His weak hands scrabbled at his neck, where a sickly purple was pooling under his skin. His chest convulsed as he coughed out a spray of blood. "Try to regenerate, Tony. See if you can. Look for that energy in you. It's like a warm, golden light. Can you see it, Tony?"

"Tony," the Doctor's voice broke, ignoring the frozen Time Lords behind them. His hand on the side of the boy's face. He hugged the small body to him, clutching Tony against his chest as tears leapt to his eyes. "Come on, my boy, my darling boy, just try."

He knew most Gallifreyan children lacked the ability to regenerate so young but this boy, this child, was special. He was his. And his son would not be allowed to die. An idea born of instinct of immeasurable antiquity jumped to the Doctor's reeling mind and he reached for the core of golden energy that had saved him so many times before. With all the force of his will, he focused carefully and poured everything he could into his son.

"Come on," he whispered. "Come on." The wispy light suffused the boy's body and his chest heaved as he drew in a shuddering breath. The Doctor looked to Rose, a disbelieving smile on his face. Her hands were bloody from beating the glass, face raw and tear-streaked. She raised a hand and placed it on the glass as relief flooded her features and the golden light around them all dissipated. She slumped against the glass, sucking in deep breaths as every muscle in her body shook with exhaustion.

The Doctor placed the small frame of his son gently on the floor and stood, turning back to the Master and the Time Lord council, pistol in his hand. He aimed it for Rassilon once more, stepping closer and keeping the weapon trained on the man he had been raised to revere as a god.

"You are diseased," sneered the Lord High President at the Master, ignoring the approaching Doctor, "albeit a disease of our own making. A weakling child of Gallifrey who should have been culled long ago. No more will we let the unworthy pollute our lines."

The Master pulled back as if burned and flashed his teeth at the ancient Time Lord.

"Kill him, Doctor. Kill him for both of us."

The Doctor spun, aiming the pistol at his oldest friend; the boy he had run with through fields of scarlet grass, who had made possible his entry to the Academy, saving him from a life in the armies of Gallifrey. Behind the instability, he saw the eyes of the child who had been his staunchest defender in their youth. His hand shook, the cold metal of the wieldy weapon offering a counterweight to the twitch of his muscles. Rage flooded through him; at Rassilon for daring hurt his child, at the Master for urging him to kill.

Possibilities swam in his head and he forced down the angry creature within him that screamed at him to seek vengeance. He took a steadying breath.

"Oh but I'm the link," the Master's voice curled over the world. "Kill me, the link gets broken, they go back into the Time War for hurting your boy." He hissed, "You never would, you coward."

"That's me, every time. Now get out of the way," growled the Doctor. When the blonde Time Lord jumped to the side, he pulled the trigger. The kick of the weapon shot through his arm, but he was only aware of the high, chiming sound of the white point star shattering as the bullet struck home. The machine that had acted as a homing beacon for the Time Lord council sparked and fizzed, smoke pouring from between every control.

"Back into the Time War, Rassilon! Back into hell!" he screamed over the roaring of the Time Lock reasserting itself.

"You'll die with me Doctor!" shouted Rassilon, raising his gauntlet. The Doctor stood tall, ready to accept his fate.

"Get out of the way," the Master said firmly from behind him.

"You did this to me!" screamed the mad Time Lord as he raised his hands. "All my life!" A discharge of his life energy arched from his hands in blue streams. "You made me! One! Two! Three! Four!" With each count, he struck Rassilon again and again and again and again.

The founder of Time Lord society was forced to his knees as the light of the room became impossibly bright. The Doctor closed his eyes as the raging swirl of noise and sensation condensed into a single point and was gone.

The room was silent.

The Doctor opened his eyes. Several feet away, the Master lay unconscious on the debris-strewn floor. His eyes darted to where Tony lay, and his hearts leapt into his throat when he realized the boy was gone.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

The Doctor spun to face the sound. Rose's eyes were desperate. Her face was contorted in panic. "Help him!" she begged. "It won't let me release him!" She slammed down on the red button again and again, but the door would not lock with her inside.

Tony stood locked in the bolt chamber, the purple around his neck fading though his face was still smeared with blood. The Doctor rushed forward, and felt the dance of energy over his skin as the sound of the machine's unstable zapping reached his ears.

"Rose, stand back," he urged as he approached.

"Not a chance," she said vehemently, her hand on the glass door behind which a panicked boy stood shaking. The Doctor's eyes roved the controls as he tried to sort out a plan.

Tony's voice was small. "Maybe I can regenerate now. After you fixed me. Maybe I'll just regenerate and come back, yeah? Like you can."

"Don't even think about that," said Rose. "Don't you even dare think about that!"

"You're not going to die, Tony," the Doctor said steadily. He glanced at his sonic as the realization came to him that even using the device to read the machine may vent the building radiation. "I'm not going to let that happen."

"But if you go in there you'll die!" Tony's voice was pleading. "It's unstable, I can feel it. If we do anything we're going to set it off."

"I am not going to let you stay in there." Decision made, the Doctor strode forward. Rose reached for him as he passed her. He turned to her and drew her to him in a fierce kiss, laced with farewell. "I love you," he said as he pulled back, eyes fixed on hers. "Don't you ever forget that. I love you and our son."

"Doctor…" she said, fear in her eyes.

He kissed her again, hard, and strode into the chamber decisively, pulling the door closed behind him. He pointed his screwdriver at the controls and turned it on. "Tony, get out!" he screamed.

He saw the boy scramble out of the chamber and into Rose's arms. They both turned to watch him. He bit the inside of his lips to suppress a scream as the radiation flooded the chamber.

The Doctor could feel his every cell screaming in pain. His blood boiled in his veins and arteries and his hearts beat faster, faster, as if to rip themselves out of his chest.

Radiation ate into his every pore, tore through the alveoli and left a wake of destruction as it tore through him. He focused on containing the radiation, on drawing it into his own body so it would not endanger anyone by venting into the atmosphere. He locked his eyes on Rose's as the rest of the room vanished in a haze of pain.

The flooding stopped as quickly as it had started and the waves of searing heat faded. He heard the soft click of the door unlocking.

"I absorbed it all," he said as Rose reached for the door hesitantly. "It's okay."

She tore the door open and he stumbled out, bent over. Rose reached for him and drew him into her arms. "You're alive," she whispered, her voice thick. Her eyes caught his and she saw the grim shadow that betrayed that his survival was not long guaranteed.

He felt another pair of arms seize him around his chest. He looked down at the upturned face of his son.

"Thank you," Tony said. The Doctor removed one arm from around Rose's shoulders and clutched the boy to him. He shuddered at the lingering pain in every fibre of his being.

He breathed deeply and hissed at the sharp stabbing that perfused his lungs, confused. He hurt. He hurt everywhere. His nerves sang with pain, but the golden regeneration energy did not spark to life in his veins.

His face fell as he realized what this meant. His suspicion was correct. "I can't regenerate. I just used my last one."

"What? No," Rose said tightly. "Not when we just got you back."

"It's too late, Rose. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." He felt Tony's arms tighten around his chest.

"You can't," Tony begged. "I've already lost almost everyone else. Please don't go. Please don't leave us here." His blue eyes swam with tears and it almost broke the Doctor to look down into the devastated face of the boy who looked so much like the free and happy child he had once himself been.

The Doctor hugged his family to him as pain surged through his body. He bent down to kiss the top of the boy's blonde head and found his voice shook when he spoke. "I don't want to go."


	27. Master of Death

"You've always been _such_ a drama queen," a mocking voice called from across the room. Rose spun and saw the Master slumped in the arch. He lurched forward and unsteady feet. "Never could resist a tragic death," the blonde man laughed.

"What?" the Doctor croaked, his face pale.

The Master fell forward onto the floor and pulled himself to his hands and knees. "You're not going to die, you idiot." His voice was ragged. "I pulled most of that energy back through the gate." He flashed between his unstable states with a grimace.

"But that will kill you," the Doctor said. "You've already used up so much of your own life force."

"Wouldn't kill you to say thanks," quipped the Time Lord.

The Doctor pulled himself weakly from Rose and Tony's arms and made a few steps towards his oldest enemy and one-time dearest friend. "Why, though?"

The Master cackled. The force of his laughter sent him reeling to the floor and he fell heavily onto his side. "Why not?" He laughed again, breathless. "I got to send _Rassilon himself_ to hell. Ha!" He coughed shakily, his body convulsing in painful spasms with each cough. Falling onto his back, his chest rose in irregular spurts with each attempt at a breath.

The Doctor crept up to his one-time friend, pushing aside glass and debris. He knelt on the floor, placing a hand on the dying man's shoulder.

"Thank you," he muttered, his own hands shaking from the ongoing pain.

The Master met the Doctor's eyes. "They're gone, Doctor. The drums." Peace washed over his tortured features as he gazed up into the bright sky high above. "They're finally gone. _Thank you._ " His chest stilled and his eyes stared glassily through the broken glass dome into the bright blue sky above.

"He's dead," the Doctor said flatly, stumbling as he attempted to rise. Rose darted forward to catch him, but he fell to the floor, consumed by pain, before she could.

Blackness was creeping in from every direction. "Rose," he whispered. He saw her kneel at his side. "Take us home."

* * *

"Doctor?" Rose asked. Tony reached over and shook his shoulder. She sighed. "Healing coma, right." At Tony's confused expression, she went on. "He can go into this sort of sleep. To recover. He did it after his last regeneration."

Tony nodded his understanding. "That's what you did. After we got here."

"Same idea, yeah." She looked around the room. Shattered glass lay on every surface. Snapped furniture, monitors spewing smoke, and discharging electrical wires decorated the room. The two Time Lords lay beside each other amid broken glass and pieces of the ceiling. "Now we need to get him to the TARDIS."

"Oh!" Tony exclaimed, smacking his forehead. "I completely forgot."

He pulled Rose's mobile from his pocket and flipped it open. Rose's hand flew to the pocket in her vest where the phone should have been and it dawned on her that the sneaky child must have nicked it when she hugged him before she left.

"Jack," Tony said into the phone. "Yeah. Sorry. Stop yelling at me… Naismith mansion. Big, smashed room. Can you make it back?" He nodded at the response and shut the phone. "He's a bit hacked off," he warned.

"So'm I," Rose ground out, her earlier anger at the man returning full force.

A moment later, there was the zapping sound of a teleport. Rose spun and saw Jack Harkness materialize a few feet away.

Without a moment of rational thought, she stepped forward and raised her hand, bringing it down hard against the side of his face. "YOU LEFT HIM!" she screamed as Jack brought his hand up to touch his cheek where she had slapped him

"Nice to see you too," Jack quipped.

"Rose," Tony said, running over. "Rose, it's okay. I made him leave."

"You what?" she asked flatly. "Of all the irresponsible, idiotic things you could have done, Tony!"

"I sent him to find you! Put him back in sync and sent him to find you. I wasn't going to let the Time Lords get the TARDIS, I had to do something."

Jack glared at the child, clearly displeased with the fact that he'd been outmanoeuvered by a ten year old. His arms were crossed over his chest and his lips were pursed in displeasure as Rose tore a strip off the boy.

"But they got you," Rose growled. "And you almost got yourself killed when you took it into your head to yell at—"

Tony adopted his best innocent, pleading look as he interrupted. "I was just trying to help."

Rose glared at him and continued. " –one of the most powerful Time Lords in existence." She grabbed the boy and pulled him into a tight hug, her left wrist screaming an objection at the movement. "You are never, never to do something so monumentally stupid as that again."

"Promise," he said, muffled against her shoulder. "Promise _I'll try_."

"Tony," Rose rebuked sharply.

Jack was looking around at the smashed room, glass crunching beneath his boots. He looked down sombrely at the two Time Lords lying prostrate in the middle of the floor. "Anyone want to explain what happened here."

"Right," Tony said, pulling himself from Rose's arms. "We need your help. I'm only just back from the brink of death and Rose has at least a broken wrist from the look of it, and we have to get the Doctor back to the TARDIS. And the other one, I guess."

"Oh my God do you ever sound like him," Jack said, shaking his head in amazement.

Rose's definitely broken wrist took this moment to assert its complaints against her treatment of it. "Think you could help?"

Wordlessly, he crouched on the floor and pulled the unconscious Doctor over his shoulder. The man was slight, but Jack still needed to bend under the weight of him. "Lead the way," he said.

Rose led the way out of the room and down the corridors to where they had parked the TARDIS. She entered, and the ship was silent inside. The Vinvocci must have left. Rose led Jack to the infirmary. She knew the Doctor would hate it if she brought the man into the Time Lord's own bedroom, even if it was just to drop off his unconscious form.

Jack deposited the comatose Doctor on one of the hospital beds with a grunt of effort and turned back to her. "Do you want the other one too?"

Her lip curling in disgust at the thought of transporting the body of _that_ Time Lord, she nodded anyway. "Can't leave a Time Lord body in human hands. Could re-write human history."

Jack left, pushing by Tony who was entering the infirmary.

"Do you think he'll sleep for long?" Tony asked, pulling one of the rolling chairs over to take a seat beside the bed.

Rose shrugged. "I honestly don't know. Fetch some tea. It might actually help." He left.

She opened one of the cupboards and rifled around. It didn't take her long to find what she was looking for. A long tube, looking rather like a spider's web of plastic. She pushed in on one spot and the tube opened along an unseen hinge. She pulled it onto her left hand and forearm, closing it around her wrist. It shrank to become flush with her skin. She'd broken her wrist once before, when they'd been fleeing a horde of elephant-like creatures after the Doctor had brought her to the entire wrong era of a planet he'd insisted had the best chocolate in the universe.

"Mmm," muttered the Time Lord. "Lights," he croaked. The lights in the room dimmed until it was nearly too dark to see. "'Ats better."

"Hey you," Rose said with a smile. "That wasn't much of a healing coma. How're you feeling?"

"Not dead," said the injured man, throwing an arm over his eyes. He spoke in short, quiet sentences uttered between moans of pain. "But it's a near thing. Massive headache. Wasn't a healing coma; I just passed out. Didn't want to stay out for long, though. We're back in the TARDIS, then?"

"Yep. Still in the mansion. Expect we have some time before anyone comes back here." She leaned over, kissed his cheek and curled up beside him in the bed. "Thank you for saving him."

"Wouldn't have done anything else," he said quietly. He grunted as he shifted himself in the bed. "Let's not do that again for a while, though, eh?"

"Agreed."

"Doctor!" shouted Tony as he entered. He dropped the tea things on the side counter with a clatter.

"Blimey, are you always so loud?" moaned the Doctor.

"Sorry," Tony said, sitting back down in the chair. "Thank you for saving me."

The Doctor reached over and placed his hand on Tony's shoulder. He met the boy's eyes. "It's my job."

"Yeah," Tony replied softly, looking away. "Guess it is."

The three fell silent, the weight of things unsaid oppressive in the room. The Doctor's breaths were loud in the small space.

Rose heard a knock at the door of the TARDIS and walked to the console room to see who was there. She opened the door to let Jack enter. He dropped the body of the Master unceremoniously on the grating.

"People are coming back to the mansion, we should probably get out of here soonish."

Rose nodded and went for the controls. "I'm not entirely sure I can drive this one alone, but I can try."

"No need," said the Doctor from the mouth of the corridor. He leaned heavily on Tony's shoulders and limped forward to sit in the jump seat. "Activate voice interface," he spoke to the room. A holo-projection of himself appeared. Rose's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Navigate home. Gallifrey. Fifty three metres west of the last coordinates we had there."

"Since when could it do that?" Rose asked the Doctor. "That would have come in handy _so_ many times."

"Donna suggested it," he explained. "And no, Tony, you cannot use it," he said, pre-empting the boy's question.

Tony's expectant face dropped. "Fine." He sat down beside the Doctor, crossing his arms over his chest.

The TARDIS shook and wheezed as they dematerialized and reappeared, moments later, on the soft sand of the beach at the edge of the Coral Sea.

The Doctor rose and lurched towards the TARDIS doors. Each of his steps came a little easier, as if the movement itself helped bring back his strength. "Come on, sit back down," Rose urged him. "You can wait and do this later."

"No," he said. "I need to do this now. Come on, you can help."

He walked out of the TARDIS and dropped heavily into the sand, squinting his eyes against the light.

"You want to have a funeral for him," Rose observed, standing beside the seated Time Lord. He gazed out over the water, watching the red sun set.

The Doctor nodded. "He was my oldest friend. My only friend, for a long time, and I owe him my life." He set his face in a hard expression. "And this time, I want to make sure he's definitely dead."

"Good plan." Rose looked around and pursed her lips. "So, where's the wood?"

"In the TARDIS. I stored a bunch of silvertree wood in there, the TARDIS can show you where to find it."

She shook her head and turned back to the ship, only to find a pile of the wood had already been ejected from the ship and was spread haphazardly on the sand. "Convenient."

Tony stepped out, followed by Jack.

"Wow," the immortal man said, followed by a low whistle. "Never been here before. This is your planet, Doctor?"

"Yep. Well, an uninhabited version of it Rose brought me as a Christmas present from the other universe." He grinned up at Rose. "Going to be hard to outdo that one next time around."

"It wasn't Christmas," Tony scoffed.

"Close enough," shrugged the Time Lord.

Jack was turning in circles, taking in the beautiful scenery. The red sun was slung low on the distant horizon, the yellow sun having gone to its own rest. The light was low and scarlet as the white sand was painted a pale pink. Shining trees in the distance reflected the light and deep red grass danced in lengthening shadows.

The Doctor rose and walked slowly to the disorganized pile of logs the ship had poured on the beach. He gathered up a pair of them in his hands and walked a few metres out onto the sand and laid them in a line. He returned for more.

Rose moved to help him, soon followed by Jack and Tony. She lifted one log at a time with her good hand and walked behind the strengthening Doctor in the deepening dusk.

Over a year before, it felt so long ago to her now, she had herself prepared a pyre this way. She had hauled the logs and laid them out, the grief in her heart held at bay as her arms worked to carry the wood that would turn the man she loved to ash.

Now she did the same once again, to honour the Time Lord who least deserved such respect. But because the Doctor asked, she would. Each of them seemed lost in their own thoughs.

The stack of logs grew as the four worked in silence, aside from the occasional grunt and huff as heavier logs were moved, and before long, it stood as high as Rose's chest.

The Doctor entered his TARDIS, waving the others off. A few minutes later, he called Jack in and, together, the two men lifted the now-shrouded body of the Master between them on a simple cloth and pole stretcher. They carried him out and laid him upon the wooden structure just as the last of the light of the day gave way and the red sun dropped below the distant water.

Taking his sonic, the Doctor used it to light each corner of the pyre as he circled it. He returned the device to his pocket and came to stand beside Rose. He took her hand and squeezed it tightly as the fire rose quickly.

"Koschei, Lord of Mount Perdition, my friend, go to peace," he spoke solemnly into the flames, his voice clear over the crackling of the burning wood.

They stood assembled on the beach as the pyre flared high. Tony retired, after an hour, to his bed, and Jack entered the TARDIS not long after to find his old room.

Rose sat at the Doctor's side in the soft sand as they stood vigil over the fire that claimed the Master. It burned well into the night but Rose did not take her eyes from it. She supposed she owed the deranged man a debt of gratitude, for saving her husband, if nothing else. She wondered what their childhood was like, how they had become such good friends and why it was they had remained in each other's orbit like two stars tearing each other to shreds with gravitational waves.

As the last of the coals burned low into the sand, she stood and helped the Doctor rise.

She could smell the smoke on her skin and craved a shower, but her exhaustion conflicted with her desire to wash off the battle and the blood and smoke.

The energy that had thrummed through her as Bad Wolf earlier in the day, when all she could think to do in a moment of sheer terror was to grant a Time Lord more time, had completely evaporated. The golden song that had sung at the back of her mind for so many years, since that first contact with the TARDIS, was so weak as to be nearly gone, and her entire body felt the absence of it.

She had been running on adrenaline for hours, and the debt she'd incurred to her body's need for rest was rising up to claim its due. A glance sideways at the Doctor told her he was little better off, superior physiology be damned, after his near death earlier in the day.

Hand in hand, they walked the quiet, humming corridors of the TARDIS to the Doctor's bedroom and together they collapsed, asleep within minutes, clasped tightly in each other's arms.


	28. For However Long

"No altering fixed points, no going back on your own timeline. Do not, I repeat do _not_ use this to get yourself out of trouble you deserve. Or into trouble." The Doctor had repaired Jack's vortex manipulator, as he had promised, but it appeared to Rose that he was regretting the promise he made in the heat of the moment.

"Doc, I get it. Obey the rules or you'll come and yell at me."

"Basically, yeah," the Time Lord confirmed. "And I _will_ be keeping an eye on you."

Jack shot him an exasperated look. "Shouldn't be surprised at that." He hefted his rucksack over his shoulder. "Well, I'm off. Not one for long goodbyes."

"Bye, Jack," Rose said fondly, reaching up to hug the tall man. "Come say hi now and then, yeah?"

"Of course, Rosie girl," he grinned into her hair, pulling her up to twirl her around. "And you take good care of those Time Lords for me."

"Wouldn't dream of doing anything else." She pressed a kiss to his cheek as he released her.

Tony extended his hand to the traveller. "It was nice to finally meet you, Jack. Sorry about all that…"

Jack took the boy's hand and shook it firmly. "Well, I'm never babysitting you again," he said, flashing a weak smile at him. "You're a good kid, Tony Tyler. Just remember that you're a kid, eh? Leave the fighting to the adults next time."

"Yeah, yeah," Tony said, rolling his eyes. "Maybe no next times. Not for a while, anyway." Jack reached out and ruffled his hair.

"Be good, kid." He entered coordinates on his manipulator. "Doctor." Jack nodded at the Time Lord and hit a button on the manipulator and was gone in a flash of light.

Jack had stayed with them a few days on Gallifrey. The Doctor was back to himself after a long night's sleep, and had spent the next three days trying to convince Jack that he absolutely didn't want to travel in time again before grudgingly repairing the vortex manipulator.

Rose looked sideways at her husband. "You didn't actually fix it completely, did you?"

"Maybe not," the Doctor admitted.

Tony looked up at him. "What? But you promised!"

The Doctor chuckled to himself. "I _did_ fix it. I just put some conditions on his travel. If he alters any timelines, it'll disable itself and send him back to early twenty first century Earth."

"That's diabolical," Tony said, his voice infused with grudging admiration despite his words.

"Practical, Tony. Just practical."

Rose laughed at the thought of what Jack's face would be when he discovered the changes. "He's going to hate you."

"He already does," the Doctor said, not without fondness.

"I give it a week before he figures it out," Tony mused. The Doctor smiled innocently.

In wordless agreement, the three of them set off for a walk down the beach, something that had become a daily habit for Rose and Tony during their months on Gallifrey, and now included the Doctor.

Most days, Tony would run and splash in the waves, pick up interesting bits of rock and coral thrown upon the beach by the sea. But this day, he walked in time with Rose and the Doctor. His eyes were distant and he frequently gazed out over the sea.

"So I'm your son," he said at last, addressing the elephant in the room head on.

Rose swallowed heavily and looked down at her feet as she spoke. "Yes."

"You are," the Doctor said, glancing sideways at the boy.

"And John knew, and Rose obviously knew, and you, Doctor, you knew. But I found out from a book." His voice was heavy with hurt. He stopped walking and sat in the sand, running his fingers through it. "I don't know why I didn't figure it out myself." The Doctor dropped to the sand beside the boy, and Rose followed suit.

"We tried very hard to keep you from finding out until you were ready," Rose said quietly. "All of us. I'm sorry."

"But _why?_ " he asked, fighting the welling of tears in his eyes.

"For your safety," the Doctor said. "And so you could have a good life growing up."

"I would have had a good life with you," he said angrily, looking to Rose. "You knew I never fitted in there. This life, _this_ life, with exciting things and aliens and space and time and travel. This is the life I was born for!"

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "No it's not, Tony. It's the life you've ended up with because there was no other option. My life back there, working for Torchwood and U.N.I.T. wasn't safe. _This_ is not a good life for a child. You've seen too much already."

"You don't understand, Rose," he said between clenched teeth. "I _knew_ I didn't belong there. I knew and I told you and you always told me that I was just where I was supposed to be. I only ever felt at home with you and John. The Doctor. Whoever. I don't know." He threw a rock out to the water absently, the quiet splash obviously doing nothing for his mood. "But I'm not going back to live in some big house with tutors and dinner parties ever again. That's not me."

"No, it's not," the Doctor said heavily. "You've got the same wanderlust I had, which my father also had. Not too big on ceremony either. Or status, for that matter." He rubbed the back of his neck absently. "Or rules, come to think of it." Rose shot him an exasperated look.

"See, and that's the first time someone's told me I inherited something that makes any sense." Tony crossed his legs and put his elbows on his knees, resting his chin on his clenched fists. "I suppose you have two hearts too?"

The Doctor nodded. "All Time Lords do. Superior physiology. I expect you'll have respiratory bypass and a higher synaptic density too, among other things."

"How does that work, anyway? Shouldn't I have gotten roughly half human physiology?" Rose found herself, in that moment, profoundly grateful for the fact that the child had enjoyed genetics more than she ever had. It spared her the need to have any sort of awkward conversation with the boy about how he got here. "Am I even a Time Lord? The president guy. Rassilon. He called me a mongrel. Said I was polluting the species." He was mumbling. Clearly the comments had bothered him a great deal.

The Doctor put an arm around Tony's thin shoulders. "And he was wrong. Time Lord alleles are almost always dominant; you have two strands of Time Lord genes, only one of human. Even a Time Lord who has a parent who isn't one still passes on only the dominant parts of the genome. If you ever have children, they'll be just as Time Lord as you are. Even if that wasn't the case, you wouldn't be _polluting_ the species by having a human mother. That's just racial purity rhetoric and it is utter nonsense."

Tony nodded, seeming to accept the new information easily enough. "Will I ever be able to regenerate?" He closed his eyes and swallowed heavily, obviously remembering his injuries from several days prior. They had healed within hours, but the memory of the pain clearly remained. Rose's heart hurt and she wished she could erase the memory of that horrible day.

"When you're older," Rose said. "Most Gallifreyan children can't until they've lived a few decades. That's what John told me when I asked," she added the last at a surprised look from the Doctor. She had asked John once, after London had suffered a string of murders by an alien U.N.I.T. took three weeks to hunt down. She had been terrified of what would happen if Tony were hurt, and had wanted the reassurance that he would regenerate if something happened to him. John's response had not put her mind at ease.

"And he was right," continued the Doctor. "Some will be able to, but it's uncommon. You'll get it eventually. Well, I hope you won't have to for a very long time."

Tony rose from the sand and brushed it off the back of his legs. "I need to be by myself for a bit, okay?" His young face was troubled, far older than his years.

Understanding the need for solitude, something she'd experienced herself often enough, Rose nodded. "Okay. Just don't wander too far, alright?"

"'Kay," he muttered. He strode off down the beach, towards the coral forest.

Rose put her hands on the ground behind her and leaned back as she watched Tony walk away. "Going to have a lot more questions from him," she said with a sigh.

"Oh yes," the Doctor agreed, leaning back as well. "This is just the start, I'm sure."

She closed her eyes to let the sun warm her face, enjoying the feel of it after a stressful few days. "And he's got centuries to pester you now."

Rose could hear the smile in the Doctor's voice when he spoke. "Yeah, I suppose he does." The unspoken implication that Rose did not have centuries with them hung heavy in the air, tense between them.

They lapsed into a comfortable silence, the sound of the waves on the sand washing over them both. Rose's thoughts were cast back to a day long before, lying on his coat in the applegrass of New Earth. It seemed a lifetime ago now that she'd lain beside the _New New Doctor_ studying the details of that face, all sharp angles and bright grins and chaotic hair, which had replaced the first visage of the strange man from the stars she'd fallen in love with. But still she saw those familiar blue eyes she'd once known so well when she looked at their son.

Tony returned soon after and asked them back to the TARDIS for dinner. Rose decided to make grilled cheese sandwiches and chips, feeling the need for simple comfort food after an emotionally trying morning.

The silence of their return walk to the TARDIS ended as soon as they entered the galley. Following Rose's instructions, the Doctor retrieved potatoes from the cold cupboard. She put him to work peeling them while she sought out the griddle, which had a terrible tendency to wander off. Tony sat at the table, watching, the wheels turning rapidly behind his eyes.

"Where'd you grow up?" Tony asked at last. It certainly wasn't the question Rose thought she'd hear from him first.

"About a thousand miles east of here, the other side of the continent, on the slopes of Mount Perdition." His answer was uncharacteristically forthcoming and Rose was glad of it. Tony deserved some answers after living most of his life in ignorance, she supposed, a spear of guilt lancing her heart for her part in that.

The boy frowned. "That sounds familiar. Mount Perdition." He tapped his fingers on the table. "Lord of Mount Perdition. That's what you called him. The Master."

The Doctor nodded, eyes still on the potato he was peeling, deft fingers making quick work of removing the skin. "He had a title and lands. We lived on his father's estates. My father wasn't very well-regarded, for a number of reasons. My people may have been many wonderful things, but they were not open-minded. He was an indentured gamekeeper, and I lived in the dormitories with the other boys who worked the land. I was down for the army, not the Academy. Better cannon fodder than command."

"Can't see you as a soldier," Rose said. She almost laughed at the mental picture that came to mind; of the Doctor in combats, rifle in hand. It was so absurd to even consider.

"Nor can I," he said with a hollow laugh. "It was the Master who got me into the Academy, you know. He begged his father to have my name put down, when no one else thought I should. I owe him everything. Even my life." He'd stopped peeling the potatoes and his eyes were unfocused. Rose leaned against him gently, her heart heavy with sadness for the man beside her.

He bent his neck to kiss the top of her head. Rose smiled. "Well, I thank him for that, if nothing else."

They returned to preparing the meal, peppered with questions from Tony who sat sipping root beer. The Doctor told them stories of playing tricks on the older children, of Koschei rescuing him from the tedium of tending fields and stores by asking him to join in his games. With a dark cast to his eyes, he mentioned Rasserin, Koschei's older brother, who had teased him mercilessly and invented the nickname – Theta Sigma, a joke about the fact that his father had so enjoyed spending time with humans – that had followed him into his Academy days.

Tony asked about the Academy, about what Time Lords learned there. How their society worked. Even as they ate, he continued to enquire, each answer of the Doctor's leaving him with even more questions.

Rose smiled into her tea, long after dinner, watching the two talk endlessly. The Doctor was more alive than she had seen him in a long time as he recounted stories and the history of his people; the billion years they had survived, watching the universe, and he talked about his desire to do more than just watch creation drift by.

They were coming up on tea time, and Tony was growing quiet, the afternoon's new information sinking in, when the question they had all been avoiding reared its head.

Tony set his root beer down and asked quietly "So what do we do now?"

The Doctor ran a hand through his hair and leaned back in his chair, stretching his leads ahead of him. Rose had rarely seen the man sit and talk for so long; she figured he must be getting stiff after the afternoon spent answering Tony's questions. "I suppose we just keep on. This is a big universe, I'd like to show it to you," he said with a smile.

"We'll travel around in the TARDIS?" Tony asked excitedly. "And I won't have to go to school?"

Rose shook her head. "We'll keep up with the home education, Tony. You just have a lot more to learn. I don't think there's a school anywhere that's ready for you."

"What about my TARDIS?" Rose huffed a sigh; clearly Tony had figured out that he was the one to whom the ship had bonded. She'd hoped he wouldn't.

The Doctor smirked at this and patted the nearest wall fondly. " _The other_ TARDIS is not ready to be yours yet, so says this one. You are ten. I didn't get a TARDIS until I was almost two hundred."

Tony stared at him agog. "You stole yours. I grew my own."

"Still no," Rose scoffed. "For one, I grew her, you helped. You're not going anywhere on your own until the Doctor says you're ready."

"Actually, you're not going anywhere until the TARDIS says you're ready," the Doctor added with a mischievous smile. "She's locked you out, that wasn't my doing. You won't be getting anywhere near that console until she thinks you're ready."

"Bugger," muttered the boy.

"Language," the Doctor chided him.

Tony crossed his arms over his chest and huffed.

"You're going to get to see the universe, Tony," Rose said gently. "The Doctor and I, we're going to show you the most marvelous things." She was smiling widely as she thought back to her own adventures and the excitement bubbled up within her chest at the new things they would soon experience.

The Doctor's smile matched Rose's own. "The three of us, yeah? Seeing the universe together, exploring the stars and multitudes of worlds." He reached across the table and took his son's hand. "And you can grow up the way a Time Lord should, experiencing all of time and space with the people who love you for however long forever gives us."

"All of us together," Rose began. "You, me, and the Doctor."

Recalling how so many adventures had ended and begun, Tony finished for Rose, a wide smile across his face. Joyously he crowed "in the TARDIS, as it should be!"


	29. We Are Gathered for the End

**A/N:** And we are at the end, my readers. This has been an absolute blast to write and while I'm not terribly thrilled about how some of it turned out, it's been fun and I hope you've enjoyed the ride. You've all been lovely and I'll see, maybe over the winter hols, about cobbling together a companion piece from all the parts I didn't post. There's actually an entire possible story within this chapter itself – you'll see what I mean. I've sort of set the stage for another piece I might write in the future. I have quite a few chunks written. Basically, how they went from the end of Chapter 28 to here.

Also, this chapter has a soundtrack chosen from Doctor Who music. Each section (there are four) has a song, and you can find these on Youtube, all of them in the mix I've directed you to below. If you go to the description of the mix, the times you can find each song are in the description as shortcuts so you can skip to them, though I've also noted them here. The first three songs I've chosen are in the same order as the mix, so you can just listen to those three for the first two parts.

Part 1: A Dazzling End (51:55)br /

Part 2: A Song of Captivity and Freedom and Song of Freedom (Start at 53:21 for both)br /

Part 3: The Dream of a Normal Death (10:31)br /

Part 4: The Greatest Story Never Told (21:42) The Long Song (1:17:18) This is Gallifrey: Our Childhood, Our Home (32:05)

It's not possible to post links on FFN, but if you go to Youtube and search for the video titled Doctor Who: Epic Soundtrack Music Mix for 50th Anniversary (Murray Gold) then you will find the one I am suggesting.

Also, regarding the comment re: the Doctor being loomed for the house of Lungbarrow... the thing is that there's plenty in the TV series (classic and new) which would contradict significant elements of Lungbarrow, so I choose not to take it as canon. Not to mention there's that whole bit about Eight telling us all he's half human, which it looks like Moffat may be revisiting... So the DW canon has plenty of internal inconsistencies, which I think allows fanfic writers some flexibility, aye?

* * *

 **We Are Gathered for the End**

* * *

Panting, Rose stumbled through the doors of the TARDIS, slamming them behind her with as much force as she could muster.

" _Honestly_ ," she hissed between laboured breaths. "How could you take us to the wrong era of the same planet _again?_ I almost got trampled. Again!"

"That was the right time!" grumbled the Doctor, checking the monitor. "Something in the timeline must have changed; there should've been cocoa trees everywhere."

Rose, mourning the chocolate she'd still not had a chance to sample, wandered over to the Doctor's side of the console and peered at the monitor. She still could make out only a little of the Gallifreyan on sight, but noticed that there was a clear disruption in the timeline about ninety years previous, if her assessment was anything to go by.

"He didn't…" she muttered.

The Doctor's eyebrows shot up. "He did, he must've." He reached over and tapped part of the console screen – he'd finally upgraded to touchscreens. The TARDIS' inbuilt phone rang a few times and a moment later, Tony's face, framed by the coral of his own TARDIS control room, flickered into view on the screen.

Unmistakeable blue eyes looked out from the face of a young-looking man. His close-cropped blonde hair and short beard were far scruffier than Rose liked and she raised an eyebrow at his appearance.

"Yeah, Dad?" he asked, meeting the Doctor's eyes. It'd taken him the better part of twenty years, but Tony Tyler – known to most of the universe as the Keeper - had gradually shifted into the use of the term. The Doctor had been his father longer than Pete Tyler had, though the later would always hold a special place in the man's hearts.

"Your mother and I have noticed some issues with A'ni'darea Four's cocoa groves…" the Doctor's tone was enquiring, but not accusing.

Tony ran a hand over the back of his neck, a gesture he'd unconsciously adopted from his father. "Well, Maris had a craving for this fruit that grew there and you know how pregnant women are…"

"You screwed up a century of the planet's history. For a craving." Rose ground out between clenched teeth. "Didn't your father teach you better than that?"

Tony snorted. "No, that's _exactly_ what he taught me. Go off course, help out a bit…"

"Fair point," the Doctor conceded. "But you should've put it to rights afterwards."

"I did. Not my fault the timeline never should have included cocoa plantations to begin with. That's your fault."

The Doctor's expression was so affronted Rose had to refrain from laughing. "Now don't you start –"

"Jack get down!" Tony yelled behind him. "That's not for climbing!"

"Jack's there?" Rose asked, amused. The child was a delight, but a frustrating one.

Tony nodded, hefting the small boy up onto his hip. "Maris is at the Academy ahead of the ceremony tomorrow and asked me to watch him. The sixth form will be singing this year."

"They'll be singing again?" the Doctor seemed a bit queasy and Rose shoved him playfully.

Rose smiled to herself, glad for the reminder they were due home soon. They rang off from Tony with a promise that they'd be back in time for the ceremony the next day and repaired to the galley, Rose preparing tea for them.

"I'm so glad I met you," the Doctor grinned up at her from the table as she set a plate of chocolate digestives beside the teapot.

"You corrupted my youth," Rose said with a teasing smile. "But I'm still glad of it too."

He chuckled darkly before sitting back, stretching his long legs ahead of him, chocolate biscuit in his hand. "The ceremony tomorrow should be exciting. It's our biggest transit yet."

Rose nodded, taking a sip of her tea before she responded. "Yeah. With the three new gates at Arcadia, it'll be nearly a hundred million this time."

The Doctor smiled widely. "A hundred million. Never gets old, watching them come through. Remember that first time, when we had just that five hundred? Oh but that was a good day."

She couldn't help but smile broadly at the memory. It had been many years since the Doctor's work had finally come to fruition, but still it shone as brightly in her mind as the day had in life. One of the grandest days of their lives.

* * *

On the shores of the Coral Sea, wind whipping about them as a rare storm brewed on the far horizon, the Doctor paced.

He would, if anyone pointed out that he was pacing, vehemently deny it, but his wife knew him well enough that no amount of denial would convince her.

"Oh sit down already and have something to eat. We still have a while yet."

Tony sat across from her at the table they'd brought out from the TARDIS, having chosen to eat on the beach this particular day. Tall and broad-shouldered, his blue eyes danced with amusement.

"Yeah, Dad. We've already been through and back. It's going to work so calm down already," Tony said before taking a sip of tea.

"Come on, let's go sit down, you're giving me a headache," Penelope, better known as Penny, spoke from where she was monitoring some of the controls. Tall, willowy, and far too ginger for her own good, their daughter crossed her arms over her chest, raising her eyebrows in an unspoken order at the pacing man as she walked towards the table.

The anxious Time Lord dropped onto one of the chairs, but one knee bounced with nervous energy. He broke a scone in two and spread some clotted cream onto it before adding a generous spoonful of jam. Rose rolled her eyes fondly at the sight. Over a thousand years old and still had the sweet tooth of a child.

Before they'd had a chance to finish their tea, Rose could feel the electric jolt of the Schism sparking to life. Penny rushed over to the controls while the Doctor and Tony used their sonic screwdrivers to take readings at the mouth of the enormous coral arch.

Rose packed the table away into their TARDIS and went to join her daughter at the controls.

Inspired by the Hipocci hospital gate that had once nearly destroyed the Earth, the Doctor had developed a hypothesis. It had taken him decades of tinkering every time they went home to spend time on Gallifrey before they had managed to refine the settings enough to break through, but here they were, at the moment of truth.

The swirling, spiralling, violet vortex fused with the coral archway, like a film of soapy residue stretched across a bubble wand. Its violent dance of energy discharge and the intense drumbeat of all creation quieted as the swirling mass calmed to a peaceful blue, stretched carefully across the archway.

"This is it," said the Doctor, clapping his hands together in front of his mouth in anticipation.

Rose, Penny, and Tony moved to stand at his side.

Behind the bright blue wall of gently swirling plasma, shadows became visible. Slowly, a single shape was joined by others. The formless grey smudges came closer and grew clearer; finally revealed as the outlines of people. The first to reach the archway appeared to hesitate. It bent down suddenly, just as a small child ran through the wall of blue light.

The dark-skinned child in tattered grey robes froze as soon as she was through and blinked up at the sky. A wide smile broke her face in two.

Rose watched, wide eyed, as a woman burst through behind her, taking the toddler up in her arms. The woman, who appeared to be the child's mother, looked around warily, her head snapping this way and that as she took in the sea to the west and the plains to the east. Her hand flew to cover her mouth as tears leapt to her eyes.

People were materializing around the pair quickly. A dozen now, all of them wide-eyed and silent as they stepped through the gate and took a few tentative steps down the beach to make room for more to follow behind.

The Doctor stood tall and spoke, his voice carrying easily over the growing crowd. "You are all safe now. The war can't follow you here. Welcome home, children of Gallifrey."

* * *

"We'd best get to bed; we're going to be expected in those ridiculous robes tomorrow and even I need to be well-rested for that." He stood and extended a hand to Rose.

Many years had passed since their reunion and still he took every chance to reach for her. When she had finally made her way through the universes to find him, Rose had not known how long she would have with the Doctor before age claimed her or disaster took one of them, but she had resolved to spend every moment of the time they would have by his side. He had, likewise, agreed that whatever time he could have with Rose was better than not having it, and so they had set off on a grand adventure, sure that they would have, at best, a few decades to savour. Each knew that the joy they would have together would forever outweigh the pain of their eventual separation.

Tony was twenty-five before any of them addressed the increasingly undeniable fact that Rose looked no different than she had when they had first towed Gallifrey through the Schism. The Doctor had spent months figuring out what had happened and was only able to come up with a single hypothesis; that whatever it was about her that allowed Rose to absorb the Time Vortex all those years ago without being destroyed had also allowed her biology to be influenced by it.

She had some Time Lord-like traits; a greater tolerance for condensed time energy and an improved ability to heal. The Doctor never did quite pinpoint exactly how her biology had been altered as she remained purely human at a genetic level, though he made a note of the fact that her telomeres didn't shorten as they should. He'd puzzled at his inability to estimate her lifespan until Rose had shut him up quite soundly by telling him that they had no idea what his was either, with no regenerations left and a knack for finding trouble.

By the time she reached her hundredth year, still as youthful as she had been at twenty, Rose simply decided to be grateful for it and to continue enjoying what time she had with the Doctor.

Her two hundredth birthday had rolled around a few years past, as best she could figure, and still she did not age. She supposed it must be the ongoing continuous exposure to the Time Vortex, but she rarely thought on it for long, choosing instead simply to enjoy the days she had and not worry about the ones she wouldn't.

While her sleep cycle had shifted over the centuries and Rose was able to regularly go for a full Gallifreyan day – sixty hours – without rest, she still needed more sleep than her family of Time Lords. The Doctor would kip for only a few hours, while Rose would sleep for at least ten. But still, the Doctor would retire to bed with her and they would go through their nightly routine together in the manner of long-married couples.

"It'll be a wonderful day tomorrow," Rose said as she pulled the duvet up to her chest. "This will be the last from Arcadia, won't it?"

"Arcadia and her provinces, yes," the Doctor said with a smile. When the Gate had finally flickered to life the very first time, nearly a century ago now, the Doctor and his family had gone through and met with the Time Lord Council. They had agreed on an order to the evacuation, with the hardest hit parts of the planet to be rescued first. The Scarlet Plains and the Minor Cities would be next and then the southern provinces and great lands to the north would follow.

Satisfied that they had a lovely day ahead, Rose snuggled into her husband's arms and drifted off to sleep.

* * *

Rose was very glad that by unanimous agreement of the Founders, the ceremonial robes on this Gallifrey did not require those ridiculous headdresses. In the early days of the construction of this new world, when as many left as stayed, the people who had emerged from the refugees had met and decided on a number of things.

The first groups through the arch had been largely progressive sorts; the few who didn't look on the Doctor with scorn and were willing to follow him through the Gate. These were the people who laid the foundations of the new Gallifreyan society and Rose was incredibly proud of the world they had built.

Those who arrived through the gates were given a choice; stay and abide by the social order that had been established, leave for other planets, or go back through the arch.

Almost all chose to stay, though a few hardliners had made their way to other worlds. Rose remembered the two decades they'd been wrapped up in a lawsuit brought against the new Gallifrey via the Shadow Proclamation by some Time Lords who were rather disgruntled at the way of things.

She adjusted the golden silk sash she had been cajoled into wearing at these gatherings for the last fifteen years around her shoulders. She still felt incredibly foreign in the Gallifreyan ceremonial garb, but over the last century, the Homecoming, as it had come to be called, had become a semi-annual festival of sorts as the newest refugees from the war were welcomed, clothed, fed, and celebrated. She, her husband and their family were guests of honour, of a sort, long though they had all tried to avoid the spotlight.

Tony, the Keeper of the Gate as he was known almost universally among Gallifreyans, stood to the side of the grand coral gate, now one of many that dotted the planet at areas of significant temporal energy. An ornate podium had been erected there. He looked resplendent in his deep red robes. His golden hair shone in the sunslight and his square cut beard made him look like some king of old, Rose often thought. Here, he was an Arthur, or if not him, then Merlin. The man at the magic gate that brought safety to millions.

Thousands upon thousands of robed people stood gathered on the beach, a seething mass of faces; of children perched on shoulders, of friends welcoming neighbours, joyous greetings and reintroductions. Faces from other worlds dotted the crowd, here to share in the festivities.

"My friends," the Keeper intoned, his deep voice booming above the din of chatter and the wash of waves, subtly amplified by recording technology hidden in the podium which would, on this day, project his voice and image to all gates across the planet. "My friends, welcome to our one hundredth anniversary of the Homecoming."

The assembled people cheered. An exultant wave of joyous chorus rippled through the throng. Down the beach, as far as the eye could see, stretching into the coral forest and along the grassy plains, Gallifreyans young and old raised their voices in raucous happiness.

"For one hundred years," the blonde man continued, "at the peak activity of each sun, my family has welcomed Gallifrey's children home from the war." The cheering began again and Tony held up his hands to quiet them. "We have been privileged to see this world begin anew, free of war, free of servitude, and free of the conceits that once nearly condemned existence to end." The crowd fell silent.

Every child of Gallifrey knew the story of the Final Sanction; the hubris of the decision of the Time Lord Council of old to destroy all creation to elevate the Time Lords into pure consciousness. The tots learned of it in school so that the shame of it would never be repeated.

On the other side of the Gate, it was still the last day of the Last Great Time War; the Time Lock remained in effect. The people were still battled-scarred and afraid, and ignorant of what their rulers had planned to do.

As soon as they were ushered through the Gate and into this mirror of their home world, they were taught about what had happened. Proud though the Time Lords might be, the common people of Gallifrey who largely viewed themselves as stewards of time almost universally reviled the concept of the Final Sanction. The story of the War Council was often used as a cautionary tale of the corrupting influence of power.

"Here, we are free. The Parliament of Founders," Tony inclined his head to the large group of Time Lords to the east of him, "and my family welcome you all to this grand celebration of a short century's labour, and we look unflinchingly onward to the work to come, that we might see the safe homecoming of all of Gallifrey's people.

"I, the Keeper of the Gate, welcome my revered parents, the Great Mother and the Doctor, and my honoured sister, the Scholar, to join us in our celebration."

Loud cheers erupted from the crowd as Rose and the Doctor stepped out of the shadows and up onto the dais. Penelope Tyler, the Scholar, followed behind with her husband, none other than the Immortal Man himself.

The ginger Time Lady hugged her brother warmly and took her place behind the podium. "Over two hundred years ago, the last Lord of Mount Perdition first managed to breach the Time Lock that had protected all creation from the last of the Time War," Penny's gentle voice carried over the quieting crowd, retelling the traditional story of which she was custodian. "Driven mad by the War Council as a child that they might use him for their own purposes, the mad Lord nonetheless unknowingly laid the groundwork of the first Gate of Peace. A dozen worlds came together, offering technology and expertise to their friend the Doctor that he might help save his people from the fires of war.

"We owe a debt of gratitude to the peoples who helped us in our time of need. We owe them the peace we now experience, and we take on our mantles as peacekeepers freely and without reservation and we declare to all creation **_never again_** _!"_

As one, the crowd repeated the cry. Never again; the promise of the people of Gallifrey to the universe that had saved them, even in the face of all the Time War had destroyed. Never again would the Time Lords wage war. Never again would they sacrifice other peoples to save their own. It was the founding principle of modern Gallifrey, at the insistence of the Doctor but with unanimous agreement of the war-ravaged Founders who had laid down the principle document on which all Time Lord law was now based.

The Doctor had tried very hard to get them to agree to call it the Prime Directive, but they'd chosen instead to call the document the Codex, and so it had remained.

The Doctor put a hand on Penny's shoulder and she stood aside to let him speak.

"Two centuries ago, I placed you, my people, in a Time Lock to save creation." The Doctor spoke with a formality and his solemn voice held a gravity Rose only ever heard at the Homecoming. "It is my honour to now be able to put to right that heinous choice."

He turned to the gate, which had reached its solid blue, open state, and spread his arms wide, his eyes shining in the bright light of the suns. "Today and for many years to come, we will continued to liberate our people from the storm of war, and we will welcome them to freedom and to peace. We, the people of Gallifrey, welcome our brothers and sisters home to this great world."

The crowd erupted in cheers at this end to what had become a traditional saying from the Doctor at the Homecoming.

Rose stood beside her husband, her arm looped through his. As they had that day so long ago, the shadows from far behind the gate solidified and grew closer, but this day it was a solid wave of people who arrived.

Word had spread quickly on the other side. While it was only twice annually that Gallifrey's gates could open, on the other side of the Time Lock, not even a day had passed. The words of _freedom,_ _peace,_ and _home_ , had burned through the people of the war-torn Gallifrey like a wildfire. Mother to son to father to daughter to neighbour and onward, the people had come to the gates and crowds now stood on the other side. Tens of thousands would pass through each of the dozens of coral arches each time they opened.

A billion lives had been saved from the war in the century since they had begun, and over a fifty million children had been born free on the new Gallifrey, never knowing the pain of war. Nearly four billion remained to transit across the gates, and it would be the work of centuries to save them all, but they now had more than hope; they had certainty. They would be safe. They would come home.

Rose Tyler turned to look at the beaming face of her son who held the hand of his wife Edira, the beautiful, tall, dark-skinned Time Lady who had been the very first to cross the gate, and she looked to her daughter who was grinning at her dark-haired husband. Her eyes darted to the front of the assembled crowd where her heavily pregnant granddaughter, Maris, held her squirming son Jack, named for his own grandfather. She flashed a smile and a small wave at the exasperated young mother who smiled back at her.

The Great Mother of Gallifrey, as she had been Named by the people for her role in finding their home, turned at last to her husband. Her eyes danced with merriment as she took in the wonder that always crossed his face as he saw his people, tattered and stained, smudged with the grime of war and haunted by the things they had seen, step into the sunlight on that pristine beach and be struck with awe at the realization that they were finally safe.

Their eyes would look to the skies, free now of enemies seeking their destruction. The sun shone brightly and the people rejoiced, singing songs of freedom and welcome as the newest group of refugees was ushered down the beach, into the waiting arms of their own people who had found healing in this new world of theirs.

Rose stood on her toes and kissed the tall, lean man's cheek. She saw the tears of joy in his eyes as thousands passed before them and as always chose not to comment.

It had taken him centuries, but the Doctor had finally managed to save his people and he'd made it home, the long way 'round.

 ** _Fin._**


End file.
